Interview: Wilderwhim

I interviewed writer, artist and musician Wilderwhim, who is crowdfunding a Zine Month project right now called Doors of Dimensia, an OSR inspired TTRPG adventure generator in a demiplane connecting all places through the multiverse. You can find it right here. He is also collaborating with me on my Zine Month project, Dead Internet Theory, as a stretch goal writer and stretch goal heavy metal album musician. 

David Jackson: Thanks for being here for an interview I'm excited to see Doors of Dimensia and I'm excited to work on Dead Internet Theory with you of course. So I have a few questions prepared. The first one is: What was your first experience with TTRPGs? What was the path that led you to here?

Wilderwhim: Thanks yeah glad to be here, stoked to be working with you as well. The first experience I guess would be a few friends were playing I think a session of 3.5 in an LGS that I was playing in a I think probably a magic tournament or a magic the gathering draft, and if I remember correctly they asked me to fill in for an NPC which if I remember right I was like a magic shop merchant, and you know just being a goofy idiot and like selling the party like dubious potion bombs and that kinda stuff. It didn't really grab me then because I think the guys then didn't take what they were doing very seriously.  I was very very loose. When tabletop role playing games grabbed me it was because my now wife was GMing and was trying to put together a group for 5E. I started playing with her and when that group fell apart, I was like well that was pretty cool, I feel like I should try my hand at GMing, and when I started doing that it was kinda like when you discover any other medium for the first time. It was like oh wow, this is like something that's been missing from my life the whole time. It was like this book shaped hole in my heart that is now being filled. It was very gratifying. I had been training to be a comics artist at the time, and I just started applying those skills to making tabletop games, and it just kinda like snowballed from project to project and like here I am. 

DJ: Cool, yeah, have you made any comics? 

WW: Yeah I have. I was doing a webcomic for a while, but I burnt out on that because it would've been right around when Covid happened the first time in 2020, and there was just a lot of chaos going on with my day job. Still this position that I'm in at the library and we didn't know if we would be able to circulate items, you know that kind of stuff. And that petered off at the same time that I actually started getting serious about releasing tabletop games. I feel like one kinda naturally fed into the other.

DJ:  Thats cool, yeah I do go back and forth among my different hobbies as well. So maybe someday you'll get really passionate about comics again or something. So yeah, next question then:

What metal album cover art should be an adventure module?

WW: Easy its Mirror Reaper by Bell Witch and if you're unfamiliar with Bell Witch, they're like a super slow doom band, that they play, Mirror Reaper is like I think and hour and twenty minutes and some change of doom, and its album cover is like this super massive wraith that's coming out of a portal, its reaching its hands out and like holding the portal to the side, and if I'm not mistaken I think its like a Beksiński painting, like if you're familiar with any of his work, really impressive oil paintings of hell and demons and shit. 

DJ: Oh yeah, he's definitely a classic. So, what would the adventure module use this guy for?

WW: I feel like there would be some sort of hell ritual involving a massive gateway and theres probably a cult thats trying to summon this titan wraith, and that image of like its reaching its hands through and its grabbing the edges of the portal and its pulling itself out, it would be the beginning of a boss fight. I've felt that way ever since I saw that album cover for the first time. I'm just like, that definitely like the beginning of a Darks Souls boss fight.

DJ: Ok so third question: You wrote, made art and recorded an album for Pulvis et Umbra which is, it's like uncommon for people to do in he hobby space. So are there through lines or connections between these different types of media when you made Pulvis Et Umbra, how did you tie things together? And also as a side question, are there other artists in the hobby space doing similar things?

WW: Yes and yes and yes and yes. I feel like well naturally, it was a module for Mork Borg which is obviously reverential of the music Sacred Bull makes. Not necessarily like of the band Sacred Bull. I'm sure Johan Nohr has never heard of my band, but all of the, if you look in the front of Mork Borg there's a list of suggested listening, like every band in that suggested listening, are bands that either I listen to or someone in my band listens to, completely normal, I'm pretty sure Bell Witch is in that list like other legends, not necessarily metal, like Godspeed You! is definitely listed as one of the bands, probably Candlemass I would imagine. The idea for doing Pulvis et Umbra, was knowing about Putrescence Regnant, which is a first party Mork Borg product that is a soundtrack and I think they called it a bog crawl, and it's just a swamp. You're just trying to get through a fucking swamp, and that was scored by, I think it was Dead Robots. And the folks who made Putrescence Regnant made another album module thing called Death Robot Jungle. So it's like those were definitely the inspiration but from the flip side from the music side, every heavy musician I know especially people here in my scene are multimedia artists of some kind. Everyone in my band, were all visual artists, photographers one of the guys is an oil painter. Every Sacred Bull album cover, like literally every one, including the album covers for Pulvis et Umbra and the zine cover, all internally made art. Oil paintings and drawings by guys in the band. Typically I thinks its pretty common for heavy musicians to also be into table top. I remember running into a buddy of ours who's kind of a local scene mainstay, little bit of a legend in his own way, just like rolled up to me out of no where and said "so you're doing a Mork Borg product huh? Thats pimp." And I was like "thanks man", hahaha. You know these art forms are like really synergistic and there's probably more crossover than people realize. 

DJ: That's awesome, its just like normal for you, I wasn't expecting that as an answer. 

WW: Yeah well. More normal than you would think. 

DJ: So next question, It seems like there are thriving TTRPG and music scenes in your city, its kind of a segue, like your collab with Mystic Punks. So yeah this is just a continuation of your last answer I guess. What are some cool aspects to the scene that people might not know about, but would think are cool?

WW: I'm going to actually start with something very uncool, which is that like, famous people like to hide in Athens [Georgia]. Like actors, musicians obviously, Athens is kinda legendary from its psychedelic rock music scene from the late 70s and the 80s, bands like REM, I have personally met Michael Stipe many times out in public like I used to work at the 41 which is a kind of, its not the biggest venue but its kinda like the longest running one, Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana, Against Me, I've seen so many incredible bands play that venue but the uncool thing is that people like to hide here and not participate in the scene. Its very strange, but to the flip side of that, what's really cool is that Athens has a very strangely concentrated pool of tabletop role playing game talent. Obviously Jay Domingo of Mystic Punks, another guy I want to shout out is Wayne Peacock, he is the creative director of Kismet Games, they've released a few things recently, specifically the game Rustwater is awesome. He and his creative partner Dee used to work for White Wolf in the 90s. I'm pretty sure they worked on one of the editions of Werewolf from that time period in tabletop games in World of Darkness, he's been around for many years. And then most explosively most recently I hung out with Caleb Zane Hewitt who is the guy behind Triangle Agency. That guy is local too, surprise. The gold Ennie award winning psychedelic tabletop. Its weird it's such a small town, it really is a small town. I can't express that enough. People will move here are quietly make their masterpiece and release it just like go back into hiding. It's very strange.

DJ: I imagine they just like the atmosphere, its like a creative place where they can relax, but yeah its pretty whack to like not participate in the local scene

WW: And I'm not, I don't wanna be, its not like I'm calling any of the people out that I just mentioned. All those people, they've all worked with me on various things. Like Mystic Punks, we had a whole actual play thing and Caleb has very graciously donated his time to my library. But like the super famous people, like I've seen James Franco like in the street. Yeah, Mike Pence came one time to like a UGA game and there was a fleet of helicopters and like carrier jets that flew over our small town, its crazy. I used to joke, that it was on some ley lines, like there's some ancient power underneath the earth that is just drawing people who are like sensitive to creative energies. That was probably a little more woo woo than you were expecting. 

DJ: That's cool, no I'm down with that kind of thing. It can be real in some sense for sure. Ok, last question: If you are not familiar with the micro-genre of Post Dungeon Fantasy, this is a super online genre, its kind of like the idea of traditional dungeon crawling plus modern elements, like teenagers who have to go to school and they have smart phones and the gig economy. 

WW: You could say Persona Core.

DJ: Yeah yeah exactly! So this mash-up is something I've noticed in your work Pulvis et Umbra and Doors of Dimensia. What do you think of this genre and what appeals to you?

WW: I think the genre rules, I didn't know it had a formalized name until I read it in your message. My answer is a real downer. I'm sure. My answer is a real downer but I can preface it with like at least I can say were trying to do something with the downer answer. Which is our world is careening towards climate catastrophe faster and faster every day, and our nation states are back sliding into authoritarian fascism more and more every day. In fact right now here in Athens, there is a city wide general strike in solidarity against ICE. Obviously someone has to be here to run the library to make sure people have access to printing and the internet. Like in front of this big storm. But if I was working in retail, I wouldn't be going into work today. The average person not only knows these things are wrong but they've basically felt the ripple effects of it their entire modern lives. And it definitely builds up like sediment and eventually is starts to weigh you down if you don't do anything about it. And I think a lot of people don't have a creative outlet. Obviously a big one for me is playing drums in Sacred Bull, its an aggressive loud ass band were like I'm literally hitting my drums as hard as I fucking can without breaking something and sometimes I do break something, I've busted you know fingers and I've made myself bloody on he drumkit before, but a lot of people don't have that literal energy outlet and a lot of these games offer people a way to be able to do shadow work, to use a tarot term, to take the dark energy that's been kind of like building up in their psyche, and put it into something, in the way that most artists just kind of do intuitively. And I think the best way to engage with that is to die in a fetid dungeon you know. Just to like dungeon crawl your way to feeling better, it feels right in the wrongest way, but its good that people have a good outlet for it. Its something that they can do. Essentially they're just unknowingly making folk art. And that's just I think part of the human soul, its been with us since time immemorial and tabletop is a way of tapping back into that. Especially with all these broken machines and systems that are not working systems that are not working for like 99.999 percent of the people on the planet. But its nice that they can stab a goblin and feel better about it I guess.

DJ: That was a deeper answer than I was expecting I guess. Yeah it expresses the modern alienation. 

WW: I think tabletop is the prime place for that.

DJ: Its a new genre, I mean its not new but its rising in popularity constantly and I think that is a reflection of how people are thinking and changing these days. Cool, so I guess we'll stop it there. 

WW: Ok, well thank you for having me, it was great to talk with you here. And I am all in with Dead Internet Theory, I am looking forward to working on that with you and excited to see it get made.

DJ: Thank you, I'm excited to see Doors of Dimensia as well. I really enjoy your writing, this next work looks like an awesome concept. 

Check out and back Wilderwhims crowdfunder for Doors of Dimensia now!

A Short History of Zine Month

The other day I was asking Jordan about the relationship between Zinetopia on BackerKit and Zine Month. Since he was involved in the formation of Zinetopia, he had an interesting perspective. We both agreed that it's hard for this sort of history to be transmitted in the community, so I wanted to put it somewhere, here. I've added some historical context for a more full picture of this annual tradition in the TTRPG hobby world.

On November 1st, 2018 Luke Crane, then head of games at Kickstarter, published an official announcement calling it, "Zine Quest, a Tribute to RPG Zines". It emphasized the importance of zines in the TTRPG hobby since its beginnings in the 1970's, referencing the classics Judges Guild and Alarmus & Excursions. There is a quote from prominent TTRPG historian Jon Peterson describing zines as the "primordial soup" of TTRPGs. They also released guidelines including a requirement that all projects needed to be zines. As a brief aside here right up front, I should mention that Crane has since been fired over his willing involvement in some drama that is much to involved to get into here. This history isn't intended to idolize Crane or anyone else involved. 

I won't add much more, and leave you to Jordans account, but I will sprinkle in some facts from the Zine Month website which will be shown in italics. I should also mention that Crowdfundr has also hosted a Zine Month event of their own called Tabletop Nonstop since 2023.

BackerKit doesn't have any serious connection to or any say in Zine Month. It's still the same decentralized, ad hoc, "do what you want/are able to" organization. 

Last year, I noticed the high number of ZiMo projects aiming to fund on BK, so I recruited Tony to help tell them that they should do something for the month of February to centralize the marketing and clicks for these projects, whether they wanted to use the name Zine Month or not. I argued it would be a win-win. Their response was to make a new entry in their -topia event series for February, calling it Zinetopia. 

Any RPG zine project anywhere releasing or raising funds in February can say that they are doing so as a part of Zine Month.

Zine Month was created by Charlie and Alex C, Bella/Nuclear Obelisk, Sam Sorensen and later joined by Tony Vasinda as a reaction to Kickstarter ignoring their Zine Quest community one year, not mentioning whether they would hold it again until I think less than a month before, not providing any marketing in the lead up, and just expecting people would come back no matter what, whether KS cared to hold an event or not. A lot of small creators didn't like that their chances of funding each year were so tied up with KS's whims through Zine Quest. 

So they started ZiMo to specifically counteract KS's share of the market, encouraging people to raise their funds and release things anywhere under the ZiMo banner and supporting each other to counteract the lack of KS marketing. They had the following aims: 

Education: provide information about where creators can host their zine, from pre-order sites, digital distributors, or crowdfunding platforms. 

De-Monopolization: Creating additional avenues of how projects are funded and spreading awareness of where projects can be found and financed will create a healthier community. 

Democratization: The indie TTRPG community is a global one and everyone should have a fair opportunity to have their ideas and creations shared, not just the financially successful ones. 

Doing a Zine Month project on KS was not allowed for the first year or two. Then people felt it was against the purpose of it to restrict where people could crowdfund, so that restriction was lifted. 

ZiMo is the small-time, anyone-can-do-it counterpart to KS's Zine Quest, trying to break its hold on the zine market since a lot of creators didn't like KS for [take your pick of legit reasons].

The Kaves of Krampus

Krampus by Tony Jaguar

These tables are intended for use with my procedural map generator Roguelike Megadungeon. The dungeon generation procedure and a worksheet are after the tables.

When not prowling the night streets looking for children to eat, Krampus makes his home in caves deep in the most haunted, mist-shrouded wood, terrorizing the local wildlife. Forest creatures fight back and enact justice on him and his little helpers. Other powerful creatures are drawn here, it is not just Krampus' world. Snow dragons and blizzard elementals dwell here, ambivalent to his pretensions to greatness.

Empty 1-2

1 Boom box playing a tape of Christmas songs

2 Enchanted garden with ice sculptures

3 Fake snow machine

4 Snowman built from giant skulls

5 Penguins

6 Stolen Christmas lawn ornaments

Monster 3-4

1 Krampus' reindeer construct stable, one with elemental lava nose

2 Krampus' little helpers

3 Blizzard elemental

4 Squad of small forest creatures

5 Snow dragon

6 Krampus

Trap 5

1 Cursed mannequins in Christmas sweaters

2 Thinly frozen pond

3 Falling icicles

4 Springboard into mouth of a giant nutcracker 

5 Sharpened candy cane trap

6 Salvation Corps bell ringer with viper in his kettle

Special 6

1 Time elemental ghost

2 Fey court

3 Human children prisoners

4 Forest creature skating rink

5 Satanic altar

6 Ginger bread cabin

Treasure

1 Crusaders cuirass

2 Christmas tree with golden star mace

3 Hockey stick with ribbon and puck

4 Dreidel warhammer

5 Giant golden hare with an emerald in its forehead

6 Snow control mittens

*    *    *

Start with a blank dungeon worksheet, pencil, eraser, and at least 1, but ideally 36 six-sided dice.

For the most efficient approach, get a block of 36 six-sided dice, roll them all at once, and arrange them into a six-by-six square. Copy the numbers over to the worksheet to generate the dungeon, each row of dice creating one room.

• The first and second dice are the Location. Count across (first die) and then down (second die).
• The third die is the room’s Size. Write its Size down in its block. Can determine Treasure type.
• The fourth die is its Stocking. 1-2 Empty, 3-4 Monster, 5 Trap or 6 Special.
• The fifth die is the type of Stocking. Listed in the above tables, write them down.
• The sixth die determines if there is Treasure. A 1 means the room has treasure. Use the Size (the third die) number to select from the Treasure table.

Next, draw room walls using Size. Enclose a number a blocks equal to the rooms Size. Interpret a room’s Stocking when drawing the room so that its form matches its function. Erase the Size numbers you wrote on the grid previously, and write room Stockings directly on the map. Finally, add doors and passages as you see fit.

If you roll the same location for more than one room, combine their Sizes, Stocking and Treasures.

Nomads of the Weird Ocean

I had an idea for a submission to the GIZMOS!! TITANS!! VAULTS!! An Islands of Weirdhope Game Jam, and I am going to flesh it out in this months blog post. Islands of Weirdhope is a supplement to the game Eco Mofos, a fantastical post-apocalyptic game based on Into the Odd. The idea here is to convert and adapt the Classic Traveller adventure, Nomads of the World-Ocean, to Eco Mofos, and add the dungeon from the Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure Doom of the Savage Kings so it has a vault.

THE SITUATION

The slaghadasi, carcinized living islands, have a diverse population of wasters and punks living on them. Nomads were picked up from all over the world along their globe spanning migration route. The slaghadasi are kaiju and are host to an ecosystem of fauna and flora, including young kaiju and kaiju larva. Corpos have recently discovered that they can harvest ambergris from the kaiju and have been hunting them with a small battle fleet and a martian mecha. The nomads survive off of the kaiju consortium, and can influence its migration routes. 

A difficult to acquire legendary gizmo allows one to command the kaiju and could turn the tides against the corpos. That gizmo, the Exonodule, was formerly wielded by a legendary punk named Wolfenstein, who formed an alliance with the island kaiju, enabling the nomads to trek the monster-filler deep sea. The Exonodule is located in the tomb of Wolfenstien, on the largest and most dangerous kaiju, Juomavesi. The island of Juomavesi is too dangerous for nomad settlements, although the tomb is a holy site, and common pilgrimage destination. The secret password to its entry is held by the Conservative faction of the nomad federation, who hold the majority and do not want war with the corpos.

LOCATIONS

Greenwave, the Ship City - The main nomad settlement that houses the senate. To be accepted by and recognized as a nomad, you must accompany them on a slaghadasi larva hunt, and successfully kill one. These hunts approach Juomavesi and use the same encounter tables. Hunting parties consist of several manta-crafts that can travel along the surface of the water and below the surface, carry a single laser cannon that does d12 damage, and require one pilot and one hunter. After a slaghadasi larva is downed a ship hooks the body and returns to Greenwave, where it is processed by the nomads.

The Consortium - A group of many kaiju, larvae and a dense ecosystem of smaller forms of life symbiotic with them. Juomavesi is the largest and most central kaiju. She is too dangerous to live on, but Wolfensteins tomb is there. Surrounding Juomavesi are smaller slaghadasi, which host a handful of nomad settlements making up a few thousand wasters and punks. They are organized as a federation and have a senate where representatives debate and vote. 

Encounters Deep in the Consortium

1-2 Chimearocs

3 Algae stuck in motor

4 A damaged mantacraft, pilot in distress

5 Wydarr

6 Coralkin Larvae

7 Coralkin Anglers

9-10 Slaghadasi Larvae

11-20 No Encounter

Senate Hall - Senate has 34 representatives, and convenes every week to discuss affairs in the federation and to vote on pressing matters. A quorum of two thirds is required to vote, and an over 50% majority is required to pass any measures. Non-nomads are not allowed to participate in the proceedings, but nomads are allowed to propose new measures for vote.

• Revolutionaries - Medium sized faction. Represented by Shake who is overimaginative and vulgar. They want to expel the corpos from the consortium. Shake’s daughter has a pride that most people wither before. Spiral is in love with Suica, and is the greatest slaghadasi larvae hunter.
• Resistance - The second largest faction. Represented by Red Zamboni, who has an unwavering love of his people. They recognize the harm done by corpos and think something should be done, but are afraid of them and won't take action. 
• Conservatives - The largest faction. Represented by Mikan who is always in a state of bewilderment, but somehow always has her affairs in order. Don’t want change, think the copros can be appeased. Mikans son, Suica who is afraid of corpos after nearly being killed by them on a slaghadasi larva hunt, is in love with Spiral. He is being groomed to be the next faction representative.
• Collaborators - The smallest, most hated faction. Represented by Horsefly who is slow witted and sullen. Wants to work with corpos and sell all the slaghadasi to them. 

Wolfenstein’s tomb

1. Entryway - offerings left by pilgrims. Roll stuff or flotsam. Enormous vault door, requires an extremely long and complex alphanumeric code to open, which is known only to Mikan. Entering anything into the code, correct or not, activates the defense module, an electrostatically suspended water serpent. Its attack is to engulf and drown. Anything short of evaporating all the water will not harm it. It is electrostatically suspended by a generator hidden within the central concrete offering podium. An entrance hidden behind a bush in the back of the temple leads to area 4.

2. Hallway - If punks run inside before neutralizing the water serpent, it tries to wash them into a pit full of spikes. The pit contains a door with a stairway leading back up to the hall. 

3. Tomb of the most fanatical warrior, taking the symbol of the chimearoc. Two fungal ghouls are in here. The ghouls are fungus that has eaten all of the insides of the former nomad looters. The Tomb contains a gizmo, glider wings stylized to look like the chimearoc.

4. Tomb of the most reliable ally, whose symbol is the coralkin. Collapsed by cave in, now accessible by hidden entrance in area 1. Under the collapsed rubble is the tomb, is a barnacle covered AK-47 with “this machine kills fascists” written on the side. It is extremely over-accessorized, has a flashlight, targeting laser, a sight, nightvision, extra side handle, knife, a cup holder and a chaos symbol hanging from a brass chain. Has a gadget for nearly every situation on it, but on a damage roll of 1, you blind or jab yourself with the excessive accessories.

5. False final tomb. A sealed vault similar to the entrance but directly on the floor. If opened, the plasma of Juomavesi’s brain is exposed and obliterates anything in the room. A hidden passage leads to 6 causing a draft of wind. A second passage hidden in the first hidden passage leads to 7. A third ghoul hides in the second hidden passage, and will trail and sneak attack anyone who passes the its hiding spot. 

6. Second false final tomb with a rotted pillar with a spear and shield mounted on it. If they are disturbed even slightly, the entire room collapses. Roll on the table to see what happens every round. 

1. Joists falls take d4 damage

2. Stone slabs fall Save vs DEX or take d6

3. Collapse everyone dies

4. Exit blocked by tons of stone

5. Save vs DEX or player trapped under rubble

6. Juomavesi’s carapace is cracked, releasing plasma like scorching energy, take d8 damage

7. True final tomb - Contains Wolfensteins tomb. Contains the Ultranodule which is attached to the living flesh of Juomavesi in the wall. It allows communication with her, and mecha piloting of her as a titan. However, she will not leave the consortium or do anything to harm her kind. 

Corpo Base Station - An aircraft carrier like platform ship that holds the mecha. Accompanied by a fleet of 12 smaller battleships, which can fend off the majority of the consortium and isolate a single slaghadasi to allow the mech to go in for the kill. The corpo mecha pilot, Sandovar Jonas, is cool and efficient, but also easily bored and always looking for a bigger challenge to get their kicks. 

BESTIARY

Chimearoc

8 HP, STR 10, DEX 14, WIL 7

Part pteradactyl, part shoebill, part praying mantis. Large flocks of them populate the slaghadasi forests and hunt the surrounding waters.

Wydarr

12 HP, 1 Armor, STR 14, DEX 10, WIL 10

Somewhat intelligent climbing and burrowing creature with great claws. Scrappy as hell if cornered. 

Coralkin Angler ​

10 HP, 1 Armor, STR 12, DEX 14, WIL 8 Bite d8.

Large green reptilian creature that spends most of its time in the water. Bad on land, very agile in the water. If it bites you, Save vs DEX or it locks it jaw, doing death rolls for d12 damage in future turns. 

Coralkin Spawn

6 HP, STR 6, DEX 8, WIL 6, bite d6.

Tadpoles the size of a dog. Encountered in large numbers. STR save or become infected with poison, taking a burden. Roll each time you are bitten.

Slaghadasi Larvae

14 HP, 2 Armor, STR 14, DEX 14, WIL 14, bite d10.

Shrimp the size of an auroch which can leap from the water to defend itself from attackers, WIL save or be knocked from the boat. Live in large shoals.

Slaghadasi

16 HP, 2 Armor, STR 12, DEX 14, WIL 10

Typical slaghadasi are not considered Titans, as they are not quite big enough, and cannot fight in the same way Juomavesi does. 

Fungal Ghoul

10 HP, STR 12, DEX 10, WIL 14 Claws d6.

After taking 5 HP damage, their human shells are broken away, at which point the inner fungus emerges, capable of a new fungal tentacle attack dealing d8 damage and requiring a Save vs WIL, or you become infected by fungus and will turn into a ghoul in 1d4 days.   

Juomavesi

HEART 10 HP, 2 Armour, STR 14, DEX 8, WIL 10, Throw Building/vehicle d10 

HEAD 4 HP, STR 9, DEX 12, WIL 16, Grinding Maw d10 

LIMBS 8 HP, 1 Armour, STR 12, DEX 12, WIL 10, Claw d12 

Special Manoeuvre Whirlpool Requires functional Head and Heart. Creates a whirlpool trapping all in its area and sucks them toward Juomavesi, dealing d8 damage to all.

Project: Javelin 

HEART 10 HP, 3 Armour, STR 18, DEX 10, WIL 10, Laser Cannon d8 Blast 

HEAD 10 HP, STR 12, DEX 10, WIL 10, Shoulder Tackle d6 

LIMBS 8 HP, 3 Armour, STR 12, DEX 10, WIL 10, Kick d8, Rail Gun d8 

Special Manoeuvre Death From Above Requires functional Head, Heart and Arms. Uses jets to fly high up and then land on an opponent with great force. Blast d10.

Credits

Nomads of the World-Ocean for Classic Traveller by J. Andrew Keith and William H. Keith Jr

Doom of the Savage Kings for Dungeon Crawl Classics by Harley Stroh

Hot Springs Island by Jacob Hurst, Evan Peterson, and Donnie Garcia

Inside & Outside Game Design

I started my current project, a Cy_borg module called Dead Internet Theory, five years ago after a conversation with a coworker who was a Joe Rogan fan. A few of us were talking about our Spotify wrapped’s and he had like a billion hours of Joe Rogan in there. He is a bit of a rule follower and sort of bland, although he volunteered at a homeless shelter chopping vegetables, so I like him and respect him to an extent. Anyway, he's probably not fully what you'd expect a Rogan bro to be. He said that he felt overwhelmed by politics and that he was interested in knowing the perspectives that are out there, even if they belonged to people he didn't like. At the same time, it was pretty clear that he related to and absorbed some of the macho identity that Rogan capitalizes on. The idea spark for the module was more or less that people give up their brains to the internet, but like, what if people really, really did literally give their brains up to the internet?

I am now playtesting the module, it is pretty cool to see my 5 year back burner project finally put to use. I never really dug into it timewise except at the very end when I tied it all together. It came together very slowly as I'd randomly think of a cool thing for it and note it down. Still, I've probably put more thought into this module over the years than I have into any system I’ve made, so it has me thinking a little bit about what game design is. There are people who will emphatically differentiate between system and adventure design, but the two feel pretty close right now. 

To me, an ideal system will support you and your friends to improvise a story, as you all play to find out what happens. An ideal module is artful and has work put into it to a polished degree that provides an experience that could never be improvised on the spot, no matter how well your group knows and locks gears with each other. A good module is also reactive to player decisions, rather than creating the illusion that they have control over the story. No module can account for every contingency, so the GM has to improvise what happens when things go off in an unexpected direction. At one point during playtesting we realized that our hacker character wasn't there when we needed a hacker, so I asked the players if any of their characters would know one based on their backgrounds. We found something plausible, rolled a few random tables from the book, and had a great little set of scenes.

Even with the module slowly simmering for 5 years, playtesting has revealed a number of things that I wanted to add or change. It’s funny how no amount of preparation can do what actually sitting down with a group can. I make notes for changes during sessions on things that never actually come up in game. Somehow the perspective of running the module, rather than looking at it from a birds eye view as a static text, helps you see things with a fresh eye. I don’t know if this difference is an idea that gets discussed in game design circles, but the idea of being inside a game versus looking at it from the outside feels big to me. Maybe it's not profound but it ties to my interest in GM prep as play.

Discourse on Discourse

A couple of recent Indie RPG Newsletters mention that discourse surrounding a piece of media (a manifesto blog post and a video review) was taking place on Discord servers. This is a bit of a change from the way discourse has been taking place, and reflects the current moment. I think it's fair to say that a very big chunk of TTRPG discourse used to be on Twitter, although this changed when the majority of the scene jumped ship when the site became openly fascist. A diaspora occurred within the hobby due to political events and many moved to other platforms, Bluesky, Mastodon, Discord and others that I'm less familiar with. Other platforms like the ones at the center of the discourse mentioned by the Indie TTRPG Newsletter -- blogs and YouTube -- have stayed strong through it. Blogs especially are at the heart of the discourse, and this is evident during this recent diaspora. This migration of platforms has been common in the hobby space, for example the big one when G+ was shuttered. These platform migrations present material changes and affect the social and economic reality of the hobby.

My own personal migration was to several different platforms. I find myself overall less engaged with the blow by blow of current discourse. In retrospect I am really aware of the effect of Twitter's algorithm, which promoted engagement by boosting the most controversial and emotion inducing content to the top. I was certainly more invested (addicted) to knowing all the drama that was being curated by Twitter's algorithm, and I don't think it really even did anything to increase my enjoyment or at least satisfaction of TTRPGs in my personal life. 

So now we are in a place where instead of having a centralized hub for all TTRPG discourse, we have moved to several decentralized, more siloed platforms. What does this mean for the hobby? 

I think that in time, the more fragmented nature will lead to conversations where basic assumptions drift further and further apart. A single centralized conversation causes homogenization of ideas and attitudes. With people following suit with influencers in order to gain acceptance and exposure. I predict styles of play will diverge, and each will develop in ways that are less interested in being a games with wide appeal, and more interested in being a finely tuned game for a small subset of people.

The other prediction I have is that isolated groups will develop stronger group identities, which means identification with each other and also the creation of outgroups, made up of people who are seen as antithetical to the ingroup's principles. This was touched on by the Gestaltist in the blog post Empathy, Tribalism, and Boys Fighting In Oklahoma, but ingroup/outgroup thinking is related to factionalization. Factions will run in conflict with each other, with less and less common ground to stand on. Discourse between factions will involve less conversation between them, and more straw man/boogie man creation to define outgroups in accordance with the ingroups identity.

Is there something to be done about this, or even any truth to my predictions? I don't know maybe a good approach would be a federated alliance of platforms like what is being attempted by the fediverse. Most of all, I am as always, interested in the new growth and directions that the TTRPG hobby space will take.

One Page Dungeon Classics: Splashdown in Fiend's Fen

I'm writing reviews of one page dungeon contest submissions that I think are interesting, fun and worth trying to throw into your home game. Among the common advice given to those starting their own sandbox, is the suggestion to throw in some one page dungeons. Never mind the staggering number of submissions and sweeping ranges of quality between them. I followed this advice and built my own fantasy hex crawl and in the process I became obsessed with one page dungeons, looking through many years worth of submissions. I feel that there are so many little hidden gems that don't get deserved praise, this series highlighting some is an attempt to undo this crime. 

Splashdown in Fiend's Fen was written by Alan Brodie and won Best Science Fantasy in the fourth annual One-Page Dungeon Contest in 2012. Brodie doesn't seem to have a footprint in the TTRPG sphere except for a few gods contributed to a collaborative project called Petty Gods, spearheaded in 2013 by James Maliszewski, author of the blog Grognardia. His contributions were: Beorl, the petty god of honey, mead and beekeepers, Päkkaan, the guardian of the Northern Wilderness, and Xul, who serves Chthonic gods and demon princelings. Brodie is also attributed in Swords and Wizardry Revised edition as a Wraith Slayer at the end of the book. This probably means something like that he backed the books kickstarter at some special tier or that he was an early playtester. 

The adventure itself is a compact science fantasy dungeon. A glowing, 50 foot, cube shaped, alien space craft has crashed in a medieval fantasy swamp populated by frog-people. Optional Complications give a few possible major changes to the module. When I ran it, I added the Complication about a captive rust monster having escaped containment due to the crash. I decided that the frog people were worshipping it along with the "Sky Box" itself. I made sure to telegraph that the rust monster could destroy any metal when the players did a bit of recon, so it became a social encounter of bargaining with the frog people to allow them past the rust monster and to explore the cube ship. 

Inside, players meet with the malfunctioning ship's chaotic effects on physics while trying to navigate doors that are only operable through matrices of colored squares. All doors are opened a roll of 1-2 on a d6, with intelligence modifiers allowed. I allowed my players to try a door once per dungeon turn. The encounter table, rolled every two turns, is titled Random Strangeitude, and contains events like the changing of the pitch of the ships humming, or the gravity inside the ship inverting, causing damage to everyone. The Strangeitudes and locked doors work together in a fun way that create tension in the dungeon that makes excellent use of the science fantasy angle. 

The cube ship contains four first level rooms that can be navigated without violence. The crystal being trying to repair it's ship on the next floor in the fifth, final room, can also be navigated without violence. In this case it is less likely, especially if the PCs have damaged or looted the ship along the way. This overall design approach that allows problems to be solved in open-ended ways means that players have an invitation to use their creativity to overcome the dungeon's hazards. 

The final interesting point I have about this one page dungeon is that it offers the possibility of the cube ship being repaired by players, introducing a Spelljammer-like campaign arc filled with planetoids and strange crystal beings. In my first One Page Dungeon Classics review, I wrote about Fane of the Fossilmancer being cool because it is a gateway dungeon to a new setting. Splashdown in Fiend's Fen isn't just a gateway, it gives you your own ride.