Campaign Wiki and More Cool Things

 

An incredible resource compiled from across the OSR Blogosphere from wayback-when to right now.

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Campaign Wiki is a site that allows you to set up and maintain a wiki for your gaming needs for free. You don't need to make an account. You're not locked in. You can download and migrate your data elsewhere any time you like. Not sure if this is something that is right for you? No problem. There's a handy article on What is a Wiki? right there on the home page, along with another article that goes into the details of Why you might want to use a Wiki. Then there's a handy guide to help you get started, if this sort of thing appeals to you.

Links to Wisdom This is an OSR House Rules Wiki and it is an incredible shared resource that compiles articles, posts, and resources from across the OSR Blogosphere. As explained in the About page, this was set up to serve as a repository of blog posts and forum posts that either clarified a particular rule or proposed a House Rule, all organized around the classic B/X contents page, as a shared resource open to anyone who wishes to share a link with the community. There is a handy article provided to help make Adding Links Easy. This really is something of an OSR Hive Mind and makes for some fascinating reading.

There is also a secondary wiki for Links to Adventures and another for Cool SciFi House Rules. Both are well worth checking out.

In addition to the wikis, there are a number of Apps hosted at Campaign Wiki.

• Gridmapper lets you draw out a dungeon map in your browser and export it when you're done so it can be used offline or whatever.
• Textmapper lets you randomly generate a number of different types of maps based on the text you enter. This is a really nifty tool, but can quickly get a bit overwhelming. Luckily there is a handy reference that walks you through how to modify your text to get decent results. This is a really cool project. There is also a bot for Textmapper on Mastodon that posts weekly random example maps.
• Hexdescribe is another tool that generates random Mini-Setting Booklets that can run up to hundreds of pages, all drawn from various random tables and open to your tinkering, tampering or customization. This tool compliments Textmapper above. There is also a bot version of this tool on Mastodon that posts weekly links to random Mini-Settings.
• Face Generator is a dedicated generator for making random faces based upon the artwork submitted by participating artists. In light of the ethical debates raging around AI Art, this might be a cool project to get involved with and they are open to new contributions.
• Name Generator is pretty much what it says on the tin; a fairly basic name generator, at least until you look at the Help document...this looks like it could be modified to produce some really interesting results.
• Megadungeon Mapper is a generator of Megadungeon maps to be fed into Gridmapper, but it is still kind of raw and a bit clunky. Maybe with some encouragement Alex might revisit this tool?
• There are random generators for Gems and Jewelry usable for B/X, Labyrinth Lord or AD&D. Granted these do not provide details or descriptions, but rather they essentially roll up the random values so that tediousness is taken care of, so either one could come in handy in-game.
• Traveller Subsector Generator This tool can be integrated with Campaign Wiki for setting up a Traveller (or Cepheus Engine, possibly another SciFi RPG) campaign. It lets you roll up either a Sub-Sector or Sector, generating the UWPs. If you designate a URL each system will be linked to the appropriate page. Very handy.
• There is a Character Sheet Generator for Halberds &  Helmets...which is Alex's own version of Classic D&D as inspired by B/X via Labyrinth Lord, and informed by many of his blog posts. There is also a Halberds & Helmets wiki and a Podcast as well! 
• Planets are aggregators for Blogs. Indie RPG Planet is for the more modern-ish games (mostly not OSR), while Old School RPG Planet collects the majority of the OSR blogs out there. RPG Planet is a sort of free-for-all that combines the previous two and adds a bunch more blogs to the mix, and then there is the RPG Podcast Planet for, well, podcasts. Kinda self explanatory. If you are interested in Joining the effort to keep the blogosphere alive then by all means click over there and submit your blog's name and url.
• Speaking of blogs, there is a page dedicated to the lengthy Lists of OSR/RPG Blogs various people have compiled over the years. You are bound to find something interesting if you go poking around and clicking through any of those lists.
• There is also a very helpful Online Archive for the One Page Dungeon Contest. This archive goes back to the beginning in 2013 and has links to every submission. A real treasure trove!

Whew! That might be everything, but then Alex is a very busy guy so there might well be a few other things lurking about the Campaign Wiki site that I missed. In any case there's a ton of really cool things to play around with or explore: lots more than just wikis or the Links to Wisdom!

Some Housecleaning at the End of the Year

Slowly but surely I've been going back over our blog and pulling out weeds, clearing out dead links, deleting defunct bits and scouring through the old Drafts folder and so on. 

The RPG Blog Alliance is undergoing some sort of evolution or going into hibernation or hiatus, so I pulled that logo and the links associated with that organization off of our right-hand side-bar. Sorry to see the group go away, but I really do appreciate having been part of that network. I found a few bloggers through the RPGBA that I still enjoy reading when I get the chance.

The RPG Spotlight Network appears to be defunct, at least the site has been unreachable for a good long while now and the RSS feed hasn't updated since 2018, so I deleted that logo and the feed-thingy for that as well. Not sure what happened, but I am in pruning-the-deadwood mode, so I removed it; if it returns or revives, or whatever, I can always add it back onto the side-bar later.

The link list for online Generators was going to be converted into either a Page or a Post (or multiple Posts), but as I was going over it I ran across sites that were no longer accessible, or were flagged as malware, etc. so I'm dropping those just because Ain't Nobody Got Time For That. I also realized that in looking over some of the really interesting things that Alex has produced over the years at Campaign Wiki, in addition to Old School RPG Planet and Links of Wisdom, that I probably ought to do a post just about some of those projects. Yeah, I will be doing that in the near future.

As for the Generators in general, I see the whole Dungeon23 thing as an opportunity to review the links I have on-hand and to maybe look for a few new ones and put together a more curated list that includes my brief but pertinent observations on the ones I include in the list. So there will be a new and improved list, probably as a post that I can include in a Handy Resources link list on the side-bar.

The rest of the right-hand side-bar needs to get swamped out. Oh wait. I did clear out a lot of dead stuff earlier this morning. Just need to move a few things about, add some links, delete a few, that sort of minor stuff. 

I also need to draw-up a little Planet icon for the side-bar to help make the RSS feed-thingy more easily findable. I'll do that today over lunch.

The current blogrolls are a bit messy. Basically I've just been tossing everything into one catch-all, but then added a special blogroll for Dungeon23, which now feels a bit redundant, since so many bloggers are joining in the challenge. Back in the Olden Times, before the Lyme-demons dragged me down and the rise of the Plague that made WotC rich, we had multiple blogrolls sorted out by alphabet. That kind of worked, but it was also clunky and really ought to have been some sort of open source RSS feed or simply a link to OSR Search or Old School RPG Planet and just let them sort it all out. But I'm a fiddly old bastard who likes to tinker with things, so that was never going to be quite enough. Maybe I'll go with the curated approach once again and do something along the lines of a Top Ten or Top Twenty (d30?) Blogs I actually read on a semi-regular basis. We'll see. Right now I'm leaving well enough alone.

Then it's time to swamp-out the Drafts folder. As of now there are 200+ drafts in various stages of completion in there. I plan on going through and deleting everything that is just a placeholder, raw formatting, or not particularly well fleshed-out. Any interesting fragments or notes or raw posts will get cut and pasted into Scrivener so they can be gone over later and maybe even grow into real posts.

Once all that's caught-up...it's time to sort out some sort of schedule or some-such. That can wait until after I wrap-up some of the projects that have been hibernating in the hard-drive since nearly forever. Yikes. I'd almost worry about what I'm getting myself into, but really it's actually pretty cool to finally be able to feel well enough to get going on stuff for real. I won't discuss anything that's in progress, so no speculative teasers or any of that rubbish. You'll see things as they get done and are made available. 

So that's that for old stuff, mostly.

Here's hoping we all have a wonderful end of 2022 and an excellent fresh start for 2023!

Getting Ready for the #Dungeon23 Challenge

 

My drawing table needs some organizing...

By now you've either heard about the #Dungeon23 Challenge, or you've turned aside and gone on to saner pursuits. Good for you.

Slowly, over the last week or so, I've been gathering my supplies and collecting what look like pertinent resources. I ordered a very nice Worldbuilder's Notebook in royal blue from Swordfish Islands. You can see it there on the lower left-hand corner of the table. It's sitting on top of a Fabriano dot-grid sketchbook, just below my truly beat-up first edition DMG that lost its cover more than a decade ago. I've printed out a few articles that looked like they'd be handy or thought-provoking, like Gus L's So You Want to Build a Dungeon? and his excellent Dungeon23 Worksheets. I also printed out a copy of Goblin Punch's Dungeon Checklist, and a few things from The Alexandrian, as well as the latest revision of the Hexed Press Dungeon23 Helper from over at Itch.io. There are a few other bits and pieces I scraped together from around the internet, but those are plenty to get started.

Pencils, pens, markers, the old steel rule, some erasers...all the usual art supplies are ready to go. Tiny sketchbook (for extra details or monsters), little index cards for NPCs, and some post-it notes just in case. Yep. That's about as prepared as I know how to get for such an undertaking. So wish me luck, if you will. Starting January 1st I will be devoting one hour a day to drawing/writing/creating one room/area at a time kept in a journal, done by hand, with a goal of producing 12 levels, 365 rooms/areas that may or may not form a Megadungeon by the end of 2023. Nothing quite like a daily practice to get back into the rhythm of things. I'm really looking forward to this.

Dungeon23 Logo designed by Lone Archivist and generously made available for free through the CC BY 4.0 licenses.

No Dice: RPG Blog Carnival (December, 2023)

 

The Theme for this Month's RPG Blog Carnival is No Dice and it is being hosted by Rising Phoenix Games. Link: https://www.risingphoenixgames.com/blog/no-dice-rpg-blog-carnival-dec-2022/

If you're interested in participating, it's super easy; just post something pertinent to the month's topic and leave a comment with a link to the post over at Rising Phoenix Game's blog.  At the end of the month the host will write a round-up post for the moth and include links back to all the participants. Any questions? Just click over to the RPG Blog Carnival Home Page for all the details, including how you can sign-up to host one of the monthly carnivals at your blog!

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No Dice: Diceless Games

I remember the Amber RPG from back in the Nineties. That was one of the first, practically only Diceless RPGs I had either heard about or had a chance to look over. I was, and remain, a big fan of Roger Zelazny's Amber stories, especially the classic first series. But somehow I never really got into this particular game. Getting my established game-groups to try out new rules was worse than pulling teeth more often than not. So I let the Amber RPG pass me by at the time. But the idea, the notion that you could play an RPG without dice stuck with me, as heretical as it sounds to so many (like myself) who got their start with D&D and all the other dice-rolling games.

Over on Itch.io I have compiled a collection of Diceless Options that has more than 30 entries now, many of which are PWYW or free. Over on Indy Press Revolution I did a search and found a handful of results, some of which sounded interesting. At DrivethruRPG I did another search and there appears to be a lot of diceless options there. I was especially interested in Rococo Space Ninjas, which sounded quite fun, as well as Square Dungeon and Diceless Dungeons, all three of which I picked up. I also noticed that Precis has Active Exploits Diceless Roleplaying available for free, so I grabbed that as well.

Clearly I am not going to have the time needed to try out these games before the end of this month's Carnival, but I am looking forward to reading through these rules-sets and seeing what ideas they spark. Of the lot, Square Dungeon is the smallest (a simple pamphlet), but looks like a fairly elegant and robust system aimed at facilitating a role playing game for very young players. That is so cool. There just are not enough such games available. Active Exploits is 161 pages and is a Serious RPG System. That's one that I'll have to make time to read over later. I expect to post an update regarding Diceless Games in the next month or so, depending on how much Dungeon 23 takes over my writing time...

Something that I have had the chance to examine more closely and actually try out a bit, and that is not only Diceless, but incredibly versatile and usable in just about any game is Obsidian Serpent Games' RPG Inspiration Cards that are available via Gamecrafter. Back in 2012 John Till, of the Everwayan  and FATEsf Blogs, served as a guest blogger here at Hereticwerks and posted a really nice, in-depth interview with Chad from Obsidian Serpent Games and they delved into some of the details about the RPG Inspiration Cards. Definitely, go check out the interview and see what they have to say about this truly incredible resource for RPGs. John also has a series of posts at The Everwayan about using the RPG Inspiration Cards in Everway that provides a really good introduction to how one might actually use these cards in a game. Highly recommended.

No Dice: Old School Alternatives to Dice-Mechanics

While it seems a bit weird and contrary even to try to not use dice in an RPG session, especially when so many of us have become accustomed to rolling handfuls of dice, or still use the old Exploding Dice Mechanic from EPT, or play games with Dice Pools...sometimes setting aside the little plastic polyhedrons can lead to some rather interesting results.

Ever since the Seventies and first getting into OD&D, I've had players who preferred to pick from a list rather than roll for starting gear, for example. Since that often times sped things up, I was happy to accommodate them in that regard. 

Likewise instead of arbitrarily using dice rolls to distribute treasure found, I started having the players negotiate amongst themselves, sometimes even doing a sort of private auction between them, in order to divvy-up the loot. The more successful groups tended to draft a contract or compact amongst themselves that spelled-out just how things were to be distributed amongst the survivors and dependents of the group. One group in particular even began to sell shares to the local aristocrats and nobles in order to get the funding needed to go after some of the more notorious and difficult dungeons or treasure hoards. 

This approach worked pretty well, most times. Fighters were able to get weapons or armor without bothering with things they clearly were never going to be able to use, and the spell-casters were able to grab-up all the tomes, scrolls, wands and what-not that they really had the best chance of figuring out or putting to use...and of course the Thief PCs would always try to snag a few scrolls--ostensibly on behalf of their uncle, some hitherto unnamed sibling, or mysterious patron, since they were careful not to reveal that they were Thieves to the rest of the party (they received an XP bonus for not being detected). It was fun to see how long they could go before someone worked out that they were a Thief and not just working for an uncle who was a rich merchant or some obscure scholar who had them under contract to discover and turn over occult books or whatever to them for research. Not every Thief character chose to keep their class a secret back then, but it did have a certain appeal. 

Greed can make stupid decisions sound almost reasonable at times. One player gave up a massive pile of gold and weapons in order to get one magic tome that they already knew they could not read, just because they suspected it was a Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms, but one that had been written in a cypher or dead language that another player--a Thief pretending to be working for a scholar based in a distant Citystate--assured him repeatedly it was, all the time telling the spell-casters (in private, of course) that it was an incredibly ancient grimoire of powerful spells thousands of years old and thus nearly priceless. He had them bidding against each other while he acted as a trusted, disinterested third party (despite his stated interest in acquiring the book, but on behalf of his uncle, of course). It was quite a lot of fun...until the Thief over-stepped and tried to rope-in a local Cleric by claiming the book might well be a priceless artifact of their faith. That got ugly, violent and quite entertaining very quickly. Suffice to say the Thief skedaddled in the middle of the night and steered clear of his former adventuring companions from then on. The party pooled their money to hire an Assassin to track the Thief down. They received detailed reports on a regular basis from various ports of call where the Thief had allegedly been spotted for over a year. Then nothing. Huh. Funny how that worked out.

Another Diceless approach to things that I tried during the OD&D+DMG1 phase was to have spell-casters/Magic-Users pick their starting spell(s) instead of randomly rolling them. They also had the option of using their Research Class Skill to track down lore and clues concerning specific spells and types of spells and thus they could adventure into places where they stood a better chance of finding spells they were most interested in acquiring. Likewise when it came time for level advancement and the training necessary to make the transition to the next level, they could spend some time, and of course invest a little gold, in locating a suitable person or organization to train them in specific techniques, skills, spells, or whatnot. Instead of assigning a score to roll over to gain the information, I set a minimum price. Once they had spent enough time or money, they gained access to the information. This worked pretty well. I used something similar for the Fighters and Rangers, etc. Thieves were a special case and money might open a few doors or make things a little easier, but they needed to prove themselves, commit daring heists or participate in various schemes, scams and shenanigans being carried out by other members of their gang, guild or organization. They needed a good reputation, and that was built through actual play. It meant less dice getting rolled, at least in these instances, but resulted in a good bit of depth, and a lot of plot hooks and adventuring opportunities. And it was fun.

Okay. Enough about Ye Olden Times.

I've got some fresh new stuff to go read over...

The Doubly Silent Ones with Their Outside Shadows

What I saw about me none else saw; and I grew doubly silent and aloof lest I be thought mad. Dogs had a fear of me, for they felt the outside shadow which never left my side...

The Book,

by H. P. Lovecraft

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Doubly-Silent One
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 
Armor Class: 7 (As Leather)
Hit Dice: 2 (Advance as Dual-Class Spell-caster/Thieves)
Attacks: 1 (Weapon or Spell)
Damage: 1d4 or by Weapon or Spell
Save: T2
Morale: 5

Special: -4 penalty to Reaction Rolls with all dogs and guard animals. Apply both INT and DEX bonuses to Thief abilities. Make No noise when they move. While Skulking (before any attack/interaction) they can seamlessly blend into shadows. Once they attack or interact in any capacity, they must actively make an effort to Hide in Shadows (as a Thief), but can only do so if they no longer cast spells or seek to attack. Cannot use verbal means of casting spells - their gestural approach requires twice as long to cast than normal means. Darkness-related spells heal them at a rate of 1hp regained per level of caster. Light-based spells prevent them from healing during time of exposure. 

Furtive and skulking, those who become Doubly-Silent eschew normal modes of speech as too vulgar and inexact for their arcane needs. Unable to use verbal means of spell-casting, they rely instead upon a more deliberate and gestural approach to their spells, which takes twice as long to cast any given spell than usual, which is why they often prefer to focus on rituals and rites over the more immediate spells employed by adventurers.

They are notorious for keeping elaborately detailed journals, notebooks and spellbooks filled with all manner of esoteric trivia and cultic gibberish. These books are difficult to read, at best, and often require use of Comprehend Languages or similar spells to wade through their dense, purple prose and idiosyncratic nonsense. Doing so runs a risk of incurring madness or being cursed to require twice as long to read anything ever again, including scrolls or one's own grimoire. Any spells gained from these sources require twice as long to transcribe and can only be cast silently, meaning they take twice as long to cast as well. Each such spell transferred into an adventurer's spellbooks (or to scrolls) incurs a cumulative 30% chance of drawing the attention of an Outside Shadow that will begin to follow that character, patiently waiting for an opportunity to make them into a fresh host.

Outside Shadow
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Neutral (Evil)
Movement: 60' (20') Can climb like a spider.
Armor Class: 7 (as studded leather)
Hit Dice: 2 (Can 'heal' by draining the hit points of their Caller or Master, so long as the Caller/Master is sleeping)
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d4, or Special
Save: T1
Morale: 10 (Gains +1 for each hit point sacrificed to them by their Caller or Master)

Special: Will do nearly anything to avoid bright light. Can adhere to nearly any material surface that is not Blessed. These unholy things delight in reaching into the mind of their chosen victim and sowing confusion and madness. They can also forgo gaining more hit points and instead develop spell slots and copy/memorize the spells their host, Caller or Master has prepared or known, with a cumulative 20% chance that the spell will be lost to both for each level of the spell concerned.

Take 1d4 from Holy Water or if touched by a Holy Symbol. If destroyed, they can attempt to 'resurface' through the foolish one who Called them or attempted to make them a servant.

Clingy, occult parasites that that freely climb and gambol about on any surface, so long as it is dimly lit or in the dark. Slow, weak and frail things, at least at first, these are not the usual Shadows one might have encountered before. These creatures bond with someone foolish enough to serve as their host, or who acts as their Caller via an occult ritual best not discussed in the open, or they will feign loyalty to a supposed Master for so long as this spell-caster allows the Outside Shadow to slowly feed upon their vitality while the Master sleeps (starting with 1-2 hit points a night). Over time the Shadow grows more greedy and begins to drain 1 more point each night, allowing them to gain a bonus of one permanent hit point for every 10 hit points drained from a willing host, Caller, or Master.

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Source: Right out of the quote above from HPL's The Book.

Belated Wrap-Up for April 2018 Blog Carnival

 So, funny thing happened on the way through 2018. I injured my back and did not get back to the blog until November. The other post for April was already in the queue and on a timer. The chronic pain was definitely getting the best of me around then. So was the brain-fog that goes with it. These are not excuses. This is what was going on. I also slipped-up and somehow did not post the wrap-up post for the RPG Blog Carnival for April 2018 that we hosted. I honestly thought I had set up that post and that it had gone up...but nope. No sign of the thing. Aside from being embarrassing, this just will not do at all. I'm feeling a lot better and part of getting back into the grog-bloggery means fixing a few broken things and addressing some weird lapses and gaps like this one. So, if you'll pardon me, I will now post the wrap-up once and for all. I do apologize for the delay. If I could have avoided it, I would have.

The Carnival had the theme of Journals, Grimoires & Spellbooks. You can go check out the Original post if you like, but really, I think it would be better to click over to the various contributors and see what they wrote for this somewhat delayed/incomplete Carnival.

Mind Weave Role-Playing Platform was the first to  contribute a post concerning The Servant's Journal, an unsanctioned record of the day-to-day dealings of a Gnomish servant's master that might not always be quite so flattering.

Vance over at Leicester's Ramble not only posted a set of very interesting Lost Tomes, they've done a whole series of posts concerning Lost Tomes that is well worth reading.

Loot the Room did have a couple of posts regarding a Manual of Mystical Monikers and/or a Tome of Naming, but I cannot locate the posts any longer. That's a shame, as they were quite excellent, back when this was all fresh and such.

Reckoning of the Dead posted an intriguing account of a sinister grimoire known as Touch Me Not that is perfect for Cthulhu-ish games and possibly others.

Tim B. over at The Other Side blog posted about Building an Arcane Library. His table for sorting out the Quality of an Arcane Library's contents is super-compact yet loaded with utility. Great stuff.

Mind Weave Role-Playing Platform wound everything up with another very cool post, this time providing a Brief List of Tomes that could easily find their way into nearly any campaign, game or session.


So there it is, finally. Again, I apologize for having dropped the ball on wrapping-up this Carnival. It was not intentional. I'm doing a lot better now and looking forward to 2023.

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#Dungeon23 Challenge for 2023

Dungeon23 Logo designed by Lone Archivist and generously made available for free through the CC BY 4.0 licenses.

"Megadungeon for 2023. 12 levels. 365 rooms. One room a day. Keep it all in a journal"

Sean McCoy posted a few days ago about writing up a megadungeon - by hand, in a notebook, journal, or planner - one room a day for the entirety of 2023. His post at Win Conditions (his substack newsletter) goes into more details. His original Prompt List is available separately. There are quite a few other bloggers posting tons of links to resources of every sort and kind imaginable, so just search on "Dungeon23," or use the hashtag #Dungeon23 and you'll find plenty to keep you occupied.

What I'll be doing (or at least attempting) is creating one room a day, every day for 2023. By hand. All messy, imprecise and whatever. This is perfect for a daily practice for one hour each day, or something like that. I may scan it all in later and clean things up, add some bits and pieces after the fact, but the primary focus is to design one good room per day for the year and see where this process takes things. I really like the idea that this megadungeon, or series of littler dungeons, will be developing organically through daily practice.

With luck (and Perseverance) I will end up with 365 rooms (maybe more). Sean recommends breaking things up into 7-room sections by week to keep things manageable. He is also collecting each month's rooms into a level, so there'll be 12 levels. Sounds pretty decent. I may or may not do that. I don't know yet.

I am planning right now to only post once a week as to my progress, maybe more often, maybe not. I'm approaching this as a fun daily exercise/experiment sort of thing, not a tedious task that gets in the way of other projects, and I do have a lot of backlogged stuff I want to work on in the coming year. But starting my day with an hour in the morning doodling and writing about a fresh, new dungeon of some sort that even I don't really know anything about -- yet -- well, that sounds excellent to me.

My copy of The Worldbuilder's Notebook from Swordfish Islands just arrived yesterday, so I'm all set and ready to go...but I am going to hold off on things until closer to the First of the Year. Like Sean said:

Don't overthink it. Don't make a grand plan, sit down each day and focus on writing a good dungeon room.

That, to me, sounds like an excellent way to start out the New Year.