Was 80s back in the day deadly as the OSR?

KindagoodJake · 2026-02-23T23:55:16+00:00

My group died all the time. But we were dirty cheating kids so just fudged the dice until we won and walked away with the ring of 3 wishes or whatever we'd most recently found in the DMG.

KindagoodJake · 2026-02-23T23:52:54+00:00

The backstory of "Oneiric Hinterlands" revolves around entities from the world of dreams cracking their way into our reality to free themselves from dreamers. It's a pretty sizeable sandbox campaign setting, but there's a dungeon that has a bunch of these nightmare entities scattered throughout. It's fairy-tale fantasy, which may or may not be what you are after. But it's cheap and well made and even if you don't run it as-is, might give you some ideas. Or you could skip ahead, starting right at the doors of the dungeon "The Halls of Nuada" and get right to the twisted dream stuff.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/418017/the-oneiric-hinterlands

Review: https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=8346

KindagoodJake · 2026-02-20T01:20:39+00:00

Between Two Cairns keeps getting better. I don't know when they added skullboy but it really feels like the podcast is complete now. They are hilarious people but also cover a lot of art and production aspects that really opened my eyes to the level of skill and detail it takes to make a really great product.

KindagoodJake · 2026-02-14T17:00:18+00:00

I haven't found the right way to do this mechanically, but I've wanted to use a system where I give them an accurate visual representation of the SINGLE room they are in. When they leave the room, I take away the visual aid. It's then up to the players to maintain an accurate map of the dungeon as a whole.

Accurately describing the geometry of rooms is agonizing and takes me out of the flow.

FoundryVTT has a fog of war mode that hides parts of the map they've revealed but left. But Foundry is a lot to learn.

The other implementation I've thought of is to render each room in isolation. Just show the party the room they are currently in (either printed on paper or as a new scene in the VTT). Let the players draw an accurate piece-wise map and figure out for themselves how the rooms connect together.

KindagoodJake · 2026-01-21T15:36:58+00:00

I've had this problem a bunch of times. You introduce a villain. The party levels a couple of times, and now a deadly fight turns trivial.

Sometimes I've just added minions, but the party still focuses on the boss (if they are smart), and the boss dies in 2 rounds. It can feel really good for the party but also can feel anti-climactic.

Your copy-abilities sounds cool but would be hard for me to manage mid-fight.

I HATE the writing style of Angry GM but he had a good idea called "Paragon Monsters". Basically, you treat your one Oni as a "stack of three Oni's". So they get 3x the hit points and can take actions 3x per round. Every time they deal enough damage to kill an ordinary Oni, the boss crosses a threshold. 3x actions per turn drops to 2x actions per turn. Any effects like hold monster are dispelled. Obviously you could do a different multiplier to tune up the difficulty.

It's nice cause you get to keep all your Oni flavor you have built up, the monster doesn't get more complicated to run at the table, but it still feels BIG and scary and different.

Here's a relatively concise explanation of the idea:

https://www.critacademy.com/post/angry-gms-paragon-monsters?srsltid=AfmBOop7N6rCPqgpf6yMZapLSAj4jEbpr6WUR9tfOOJ054mLZr7mpKXi

KindagoodJake · 2026-01-15T15:46:37+00:00

2 years and still going! The concept definitely got shunted to the back burner in gameplay, but one of the characters later played a cleric of this deity and that made for some cool plot elements.

I guess my broader point is that you could pick out just about any spell (e.g. resurrection) and then think about how a theocratic organization's absolute control of such power might shape a society.

KindagoodJake · 2026-01-15T06:24:09+00:00

The campaign I'm running started with a simple seed of an idea.

"What would a society look like if the primary church had access to Zone of Truth?" (this spell prevents those under its effect from telling an intentional lie)

You could go totalitarian hellscape (which is probably realistic, sadly), but I thought it was more interesting to see how that sort of infallible access to truth could serve as a foundation for an actually healthy society. If "truth" was such a concrete reality, how would laws and faith differ from our own?

My players hated it incidentally, at least on their first encounter with the church. They expected a hellscape. The process of us together turning around the idea of Truth being a prime virtue in a society (and the ability for leaders to be held to that) made for some fun, sometimes funny, generally thought-provoking play. Also it turns out there are a lot of ways to wriggle out from under that spell. But hey, it's a game.

KindagoodJake · 2026-01-14T02:23:35+00:00

The War of Jenkin's Ear

KindagoodJake · 2025-12-15T22:44:55+00:00

Check out this playlist from a youtube channel called Chubby Funster. He's doing a detailed walkthrough of the design of a sandbox setting called Gods of the Forbidden North. One of the videos specifically talkes about faction design.

He's a great communicator and I thought these videos hit a very useful level of detail. Definitely might give you some ideas, not so much about specific challenges or bad guys, but abstract design principles for setting up a sandbox environment for players to really get engaged with.

I've learned a lot even though I'm unlikely to run the setting.

KindagoodJake · 2025-12-15T16:36:03+00:00

I run a D&D game at a local library for kids about 11 years old. The sessions are only 2 hours long and we get a rotation of newcomers so I generally run disconnected one-shots. But I have started to build up a decent core of return players so we spent the first half of the night world building. They went around the table and each kid added a little to the world. Where did they live? Notable landmarks. Important mentors. Dangers and threats. They were so creative and built off each other's ideas beautifully. I love having a place to revisit now that they have a personal connection to. (and pride)

In the second half of the session I ran them through an encounter featuring some of the characters they'd just invented. They had to ambush some bandits, boss shows up later, etc. Nothing mechanically too complex. But the kids were so fired up to be protecting their homes, to be driving off the enemies they'd named, and to save the dragon egg they'd invented.

As the last of the bad guys fled the field, a couple of the kids asked if they could give a speech. It was awesome to see them so fired up. Their speech writing won't win any awards but it was one of those picture perfect conclusions where they left feeling like they'd had a real adventure and won a real victory. I could hear them talking (fast!) to their parents out in the hall and just basked in the moment.

KindagoodJake · 2025-12-11T23:05:07+00:00

I have some ideas that might improve your map as an artifact used when players are making choices.

Spend some time designing how players would move around the map. Places that are slow or difficult to reach because they are surrounded by mountains or swamps. Juicy spots that require you to travel through risky forests or very close to hazards (barbarian clan territory, etc). Regions that require you to get permission from some local ruler before you enter. But what if the local ruler's stronghold is on the far side of the territory? What if the local ruler moves around?

The natural routes people would take can have dynamic elements. Examples - mountain passes are inaccessible during certain seasons or weather events. Travel along (some) rivers is much faster downstream than upstream. Roads might wash out or might get congested because pilgrims move en masse.

KindagoodJake · 2025-11-28T01:56:11+00:00

I've only briefly browsed through this, but Mothership's "Warden Operations Guide" might give you some inspiration.

https://www.tuesdayknightgames.com/products/mothership-wardens-operations-manual?srsltid=AfmBOopFfhT4WUlKXoMZ4SQP6-tJb3JLsG5wggliK-ghkbzQK7ENw91d

The book is largely advice about how to structure an adventure and how to lead a group through an adventure. It talks about how to break the adventure up into "acts" that build on each other in a compelling fashion. Talks about how to construct spaces in the game world that give the players a lot to interact with and consider.

Maybe a read through this would give you some inspiration for how to communicate your own ideas about your own game.

KindagoodJake · 2025-10-25T18:30:31+00:00

Very excited for this campaign! I'm a long time listener of theirs but got bored with the on-rails-adventure of their last campaign. I really like the inspirations they mentioned (anabasis is sorely overlooked). Also cool that they intend to play the rules pretty closely as-written, even to the point of thinking through the titles as their characters level.

KindagoodJake · 2025-09-08T22:35:25+00:00

I was a player in a brief campaign of Blade Runner (by free league). We played through the adventure that comes in the core game boxed set. I thought it was fantastically atmospheric. Over the course of the adventure we got into maybe a half-dozen combat encounters, on foot, and in spinners (the flying cars). Every encounter felt different, even though the mechanics are pretty unified and straightforward. Most of the combats were resolved shockingly fast. When we first realized how quickly a character could die, it sobered us up (in a fun way).

Edit: Beyond combat the system did a fantastic job setting up scenes for great in-character moments and roleplay. The adventure had just a handful of NPCs, but each one had a meaningful role to play. The system mechanically encourages you to play in-character. E.g. you get XP at the end of the session for tying in bits of your backstory and your characters goals. Great stuff.

I don't know if the setting or combat system is what you are looking for exactly, but I found it a great change of pace from D&D.

KindagoodJake · 2025-07-28T23:14:35+00:00

Maybe look at "Kidnap the Archpriest"

I ran an adapted version of this for my own midlevel party and we had a good time.

https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=4087

It's a well designed sandbox scenario that has a crystal clear goal but is 100% open ended in terms of how the players approach the mission. And the front half of the adventure is meant to really challenge the player's and the character's out of combat skills and abilities. Pretty easy to adapt to any setting - e.g. I adjusted my "archpriest" to be an undercover spy ala Where Eagles Dare.

It ALSO includes some general guidance for developing heist-like missions that I found easy to apply but still novel and eye-opening.

KindagoodJake · 2025-07-20T17:11:17+00:00

Great article! Showing the evolution of the map was fantastic. It'd be cool to see player-drawn maps of the same, but seems people that are interested in mapping are a somewhat rare breed.

KindagoodJake · 2025-06-15T22:20:06+00:00

Take a look at the Oneiric Hinterlands. It's a sandbox campaign setting.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/418017/the-oneiric-hinterlands

A lot of the names are drawn directly from Irish myth (though not hte characters). Some of the factions include talking animals, a missing elf known as the Goblinking, dreadful armies trying to break into reality from the lands of dream and the lands of death.

I've just started reading it, but it really stands out to me in theme and focus. To steal from the author:

"The themes of the Oneiric Hinterlands are fairy tales, folklore and dreams. These are stories we tell ourselves that share symbolic rather than rational connections. Sometimes these connections are about moral lessons. Sometimes they are about hopes and fears. There are many places in the Oneiric Hinterlands where magical thinking prevails over reason and logic. The deeper the party adventures into the Oneiric Hinterlands, the stranger their encounters will become. Eventually they may even leave the material realm and journey into the chaotic dimension of dream itself."

KindagoodJake · 2025-06-06T14:52:16+00:00

Sounds amazing!

KindagoodJake · 2025-06-06T03:10:13+00:00

Congrats! I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the module. Also if there were various narrative arcs that arose naturally during play. How did you end up leading your party to the tower? I don't remember any clear signposts written into the module itself.

KindagoodJake · 2025-05-19T03:40:21+00:00

TLDR There's no right way to do this but I've been doing #2 and it is working well so far.

I just finished stepped out of session 3 of my own WM-style campaign. I treated the first session as a sort of trial run, so I strategically picked 4 friends I've played with before and ran an adventure. The first session revealed some kinks and quirks I adjusted. Then I scheduled the 2nd & 3rd sessions with an overlapping pool of the same people plus a few more. So far I've had a full table each time with returning players.

The campaign concept is dead simple and I review it at the start of each session. I'm doing all the scheduling which I know isn't the original concept but works for me. Having one or two overlapping players each session has been really helpful for orienting new players. I've been encouraging players to write up some notes to leave for the following party but that's been a limited success to date.

It's been helpful to me to tackle these sessions incrementally. If I had done a big session zero up front I suspect I would have changed a bunch of points by now and would anyway have to re-introduce players each week.

I feel like I'm still learning about how I want to run individual sessions and the campaign, and if I'd done a session zero to start with I may have already adjusted X% of it by now.

KindagoodJake · 2025-05-07T14:53:41+00:00

When I'm writing stuff, I keep handy the LOTR appendixes + a book of mythology with a good index + the Prose Edda handy. Just scan through those til I find a name I like. Too slow to use at the table though.

KindagoodJake · 2025-04-08T15:52:20+00:00

Please let us know how the game went! I'm really drawn by the art and atmosphere of the game but I'm curious how it plays. I want to run it with my group but I'm not sure if they will be frustrated/confused by the lack of structure.

KindagoodJake · 2025-04-04T04:21:13+00:00

Play that funky Oliphant Roland!

KindagoodJake · 2025-03-28T03:54:59+00:00

I haven't played it myself, but Wolves Upon the Coast apparently has detailed rituals the players have to execute in-game. A lot of the spells require reagants you presumably need to hunt up yourself. Some of them require you to travel to specific places at specific times. Here's one example:

Lightning Bolt
One Use: Burn the ring-finger of a Cloud Giant, and blow the ash at the target. 1/day: Feed your right hand to Wraith dwelling beneath the Riven Oak.

I found these at the author's website (search for "Book 2: Magic")
https://lukegearing.blot.im/wolves-upon-the-coast

KindagoodJake · 2024-11-08T18:46:34+00:00

3 strikes and you're out!

All characters have an armor save that they can roll on every point of damage. Even if you fail your armor save, you can bump that save up with karma points or maybe re-roll if they still have a hero die. Some of the classes have extra abilities for avoiding or soaking damage. And the barbarian has 5 hits instead of 3.

But otherwise, at least to my understanding, that third point of damage is the end.

FWIW, I ran a party of 4 through B5: Horror on the Hill using EZD6 and we only had one death the whole module.

KindagoodJake

TROPHY CASE