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So as the author of this. First, there is no "superweapon" in the Prison of the Hated Pretender. There is a broken down magical device for predicting the future that is tied to the wards of the tower. The Pretender (as detailed a bit in the follow up adventure) ruled through strange magical...

I tend to agree or even say that any split is artificial. Spelljammer and Dark Sun were certainly a subject of discussion (in a positive way usually) back when the OSR scene was a going concern. I don't just mean on G+ either, where bespoke setting creation (or adaption) was a huge thing...

It doesn't mention dungeons as much as it mentions blog posts and similar resources but it does include references to Thracia. The two main people involved are the designer of His Majesty the Wyrm and Warren of I Cast Light Blog who is a big Nightwick Abbey guy. In general I'd say the advice...

Recently a few friends of mine completed this course on designing dungeons, specifically old school dungeons. I haven't seen too many people talk about it, but think it's a pretty valuable resource if one is trying to get started on writing up something. The main caveats are: 1) This is...

Absolutely! I am big on these things as well and think they help, but they do increase length and complexity as well - still a good trade off for complex things like a mega dungeon. For simple things and like a 10 room lair with 2 factions though they aren't worth it. Also this 100% - What...

So I hear you one OSE - I think it's a useful game text, but I also think it came a bit too late ... It originally designed at the beginning of the end of the G+ era. That is to say when OSE was written there was a fairly strong consensus in the largest part of the OSR that B/X was the...

Absolutely, I think it would take a lot of prep to run Arden Vul no matter what. Even if the keys were streamlined in whatever one's preferred method is there's still so much dungeon, so many factions, so many interactions and so many connected details to the thing that it needs to be understood...

Hashing out what the OSR is or isn't is an impossible task. Personally I've been involved in the OSR and now Post OSR since maybe 2011 (at least that's when I started blogging). Personally I don't take a rules based approach to defining the OSR. I see the OSR as a RPG scene that started...

No - they tend on the longer side for what they are - very late TSR - but that one is exceptional. To some degree I have to forgive Arden Vul for this. Unlike a lot of other mega-dungeons it goes all in on Jaquaysian archeological complexity ... and it largely succeeds. It's a pretty amazing...

I tend to agree the difficulty is 1) keying complex rooms and 2) Keying simple rooms in less standard spaces. E.G. "4 orcs arguing about what's on the menu" is likely functional for a room in a stone dungeon beneath the ruined castle when orcs are your basic "evil monster-men". It won't work...

I've been thinking a lot about keying again... perhaps it's my day job moving into highly restricted forms of informational writing, perhaps it's the One Page Dungeon Contest rolling around again, and perhaps writing dungeon keys is just something I find comforting. I wrote a post about it...

"I adopted the rules I'd done earlier for a Civil War game called Ironclads that had hit points and armor class. It meant that players had a chance to live longer and do more. They didn't care that they had hit points to keep track of because they were just keeping track of little detailed...

We do know that bows were frequently mentioned in "viking sagas" and found at many Northern European sites. They tend to be single stave bows that are fairly long and mentions of war bows (such as in Olafs Trygvasonar's sagas) tend to emphasize heavy draw weights and use at sea. A fair amount...

On of the things I try to avoid in thinking about RPG mechanics, especially combat ones, is stuff that seems cool, or is too specific, or too hyped. I think of this as the "Katana Issue" or more historically maybe "Gygax's Spear"*. The basic problem I see is the urge towards simulation (not...

The one I use is "if you roll under a 5 on the to hit - regardless of any bonuses etc - you do full damage to an ally". It's bad enough that people avoid it most of the time, but also will do it when things are tense. I tend to think of light crossbows and throwing axes/knives as the dungeon...

I don't but since no one fires missile weapons other then throwing knives and axes more then once usually (the rules for firing into melee are harsh ... but fair I think). I would likely in a game with more missile fire. Not exactly sure how though.

It doesn't matter if Tolkien's dwarves cast spells... This whole discussion reminds me of "Gandalf is a 7th level Magic-User tops" sort of claims. Tolkien's books do not follow any D&D system and can't really be laid on top of them very well, and despite Elric or Cthulhu getting stats in the...

Personally I like to keep things a bit less granular and more abstract. I privilege location and placing over initiative and speed. My approach to rank/file and flank combat is here: https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/2023/10/dungeon-skr.html Usually in dungeon crawls this ends up with...