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rooted in blogs, linked in a ringRise Up Comus · linked by the ring
Posts by Rise Up Comus that other blogs in the ring have linked.
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Picked up recently
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My colleague Warren of ICastLight was kind enough to send me a copy of the MERP module The Haunted Ruins of the Dunlendings. MERP modules can be a little hit or miss, but I...Linked by the ring
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Part 3 of my investigation into "Hobbits have a Roadside Picnic." Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.Traps"I don’t exactly understand your terminology. What traps?”Noonan laughed....Linked by the ring
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When people give me a recommendation for a book, a show, whatever, I always say "I'll add it to the list!" And I'm not kidding: I have a list. It sits at the bottom of my To Do...Linked by the ring
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An installment of my hexmap for Middle-earth project. Follow the "Middle-earth Hexmap" tag for all entries in this series.Art by Goran GligovicThe Angle is a wedge of land...Linked by the ring
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I bet you've seen notes in dungeon keys that say something like: The murals depict an ibis-headed god handing out the tools of writings to grateful humans. (Clerics know that...
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When Sean McCoy proposed the Dungeon23 project, I couldn't help but join in. I wrote two dungeons--one for His Majesty the Worm and one for Under Hill, By Water. This effort...Linked by the ring
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Working on the Middle-earth Hexcrawl Project has made me want to articulate some brief thoughts I've had on writing material for canon settings. This is a microblog, unedited,...Linked by the ring
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Herein I read the monster manual entries from OD&D in order and try to parse them into groupings and categories that let me use them at the table.Every attempt to read OD&D is...Linked by the ring
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A while back, when juggling all the materials I needed to run a game, I had the idea for and mocked up a proof of concept of a hexcrawl dashboard--something that had everything...Linked by the ring
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I've long been a big fan of kung fu movies, but only recently started dabbling in the core texts by reading a translation of The Legend of the Condor Heroes. This has prompted...Linked by the ring
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"I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope...
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When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what goblins get. You can also use this table for folks like half-orcs or maybe even tieflings,...Linked by the ring
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There's nothing revolutionary in this post, but I think it contains generally good advice and feels worthwhile articulating.When an RPG gives you something generic, a player...
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When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what hobbits get.You can either roll a d10 for your culture to get a result from a...Linked by the ring
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Sometimes when you're writing a dungeon room, it can feel like pulling teeth. The empty space and the stocking result of "Trap with Treasure" mocks you.Here's a technique to...
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When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what elf-friends get.What are elf-friends? Well:The master of the house was an elf-friend—one...Linked by the ring
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When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what elves get.This is ostensibly for the Middle-earth Hexcrawl project but I think it can be...Linked by the ring
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When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what humans get.You can either roll a d9 for your culture to get a result from a tightly-bound...Linked by the ring
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It is 3 AM and I cannot sleep because I woke up with these random mechanics coming into my head. But one of the reasons you keep a blog is to have a place to dump such...
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Schwew. OK. This turned into a long one. Break!! has the best crafting rules for an OSR game that I've ever seen. Originally, I was trying to borrow them for my little house...Linked by the ring
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A magic item inspired by Phlox's version, here. Approaching from my premise that +1s are boring magic items, how can I adapt the classic periapt of wisdom?The periapt of wisdom...Linked by the ring
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0501Southwest: Valley of Eternal CheerSouth: SnomesSoutheast: Jinglebell BarrensRANKIN/BASS PRO SHOP: A pyramid of silver and gold. The single obvious entrance at its base is...
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0203North: Conifer MountainNortheast: Three CalvesSoutheast: The GrumpusSouth: Gingerbread Village HOUSE OF THE KRINGLES. A snowy landscape in the domain of the Winter Warlock....
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Back in September of this year, I began a daily writing prompt inspired by this year's reread of The Lord of the Rings and Idraluna Archive's excellent hexmap of Middle-earth....
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When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what dwarves get.You can either roll a d7 for your house to get a result from a tightly-bound...Linked by the ring
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In case you missed it, I'm currently running a direct pre-order campaign for my upcoming 100+ room, 5 level dungeon The Castle Automatic. Become an Early Worm now!But what's...Linked by the ring
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An installment of my hexmap for Middle-earth project. Follow the "Middle-earth Hexmap" tag for all entries in this series.We previously visited the Northfarthing near Long...Linked by the ring
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A goal with my Middle-earth Hexcrawl project is to capture the feeling I first came to love in Zelda: the feeling of wandering around and falling into a hole and realizing Oh...Linked by the ring
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Here is a procedure to simulate getting a good night's sleep in the wilderness. An adventuring party will need to perform several jobs around camp. Each job accomplished...Linked by the ring
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I reread The Lord of the Rings most years, and have done so since I was 12. As I was reading it this year, I was thinking about the physicality of journeys and exploration...Linked by the ring
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When Warren first had the idea of an Appendix N blog bandwagon, I thought I'd skip it. His Majesty the Worm has an Appendix N section (Dungeon Meshi! House of Orr!...Linked by the ring
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Here's a GMing tip. When a combatant reaches 0 HP (or 0 HD in His Majesty the Worm), ask the player who struck the final blow: "How do you vanquish this foe?" This does three...Linked by the ring
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I posted my blog post, 10 Reasons Why the Guild has a Partial Map, on Prismatic Wisdom's Discord (as is my wont). Then I went to go get a hair cut. When I got back, the channel...Linked by the ring
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His Majesty the Worm advocates for the GM to give the players a copy of the dungeon map. In my opinion, this is all positives and practically no negatives. But of all my good...Linked by the ring
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Weird Writer's prep post has started a bandwagon. I have enjoyed reading people's various modes of prep.As I am preparing a campaign right now (running the Yellow Book of...
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The cockroachatrice is, like all animals with a stupid name, the result of a wizard's bad sense of humor. Goddamn, those idiots ruin everything.These 1' cockroaches have a...Linked by the ring
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I don't think I'm the first person to make this observation (as an OSR blogger, I almost never am), but it occurred to me today how useful the saving throw names are for...
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I have gone on record as saying that making a megadungeon is fun and easy. I wrote a book about it. But I have good news. It's even easier than I made it out to be. I want to...Linked by the ring
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A while back, I wrote about the tensions between wanting no homework and settings with rich lore (and some potential solutions). Today, I'll write about another solution:...Linked by the ring
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My colleague, Warren at ICastLight, posited that we can embed short-term memory into tables like your encounter table to create a more dynamic or interesting engine for...Linked by the ring
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As Dan pointed out in his post, the cleric's Turn Undead ability says something about the default setting of D&D: there are undead here. Indeed, for this to be a core class...Linked by the ring
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What is deconstruction?In 1967, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida published the book Of Grammatology. In it, he reevaluated traditional Western ideas, claiming there is no...Linked by the ring
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In many RPG books, character creation is right in the front of the book to give the new reader a sense of what the game is about, help them picture who they'll be playing and...Linked by the ring
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Hello, happy New Year! As we start 2025, I have noticed that many people are spinning up dungeon-creation projects (Dungeon23 continues into its third year, and the Zungeon...Linked by the ring
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Marcia at Traverse Fantasy had the idea of bite-sized dungeons--six room layouts that contain a normalized array of the types of rooms you can get in procedural generation in...Linked by the ring
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Here are some equipment packages you can use when generating new characters. The goal is to make it quick and easy to pick some gear based on your motifs/failed careers without...
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The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game is one of my favorite licensed Tolkien games. It was released in 1991, and was largely the work of long-time ICE designer Jessica Ney...Linked by the ring
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With the dissolution of so many things I once enjoyed (Twitter, America, etc.), I'm going to try and start doing more microblogging. Too many of my previous thoughts were...Linked by the ring
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Here is a puzzle for your next dungeon. I have used it before. It is fun.There is a maze in the dungeon. It has many twists and turns, to say nothing about the zombies. Those...Linked by the ring
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Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?Me. I do. His Majesty the Worm has a vampire in its Bestiary. Here are some variations on that theme to give you some variety based on...Linked by the ring