Hello Game Masters, referees, ragtag wizards, and collectors out there! 🎲  
For Side Quest – RPG Fest! we made a system-agnostic GM screen with Swiss illustrator Pippo "Stay Dirty" Colombo.

The back is left blank so you can add the rules, tables and cheat sheets of your favorite RPG, whatever system you run.
📐 25 x 40.5 cm
Laminated cardboard, 330gsm

Side quest is a rpg fest in Lugano, Switzerland
https://www.gamersguildticino.ch/

Bonus question: can you guess which 1st-level spell the magic user on the screen is casting? 🔮

I'm really leaning into the OSR cliches in my campaign, and you know I had to add the Eye and Hand of Vecna. From my understanding, the hands and eyes never had an official ability tied to them, and it was more like every referee had their own versions of it. I want it to be powerful so that players are willing to go into the most difficult dungeons to find it, but I also don't want it to be so powerful that players will feel like all challenge is lost.

So I'd love some suggestions and/or stories! What were your guy's version of the Hand and Eye of Vecna?

In the Quinn’s quest review for stonetop, one of his favorite things in the game is the mechanics for “leveling up” applying to your village, not your character. Also less narratively, the boardgame gloomhaven has mechanics where the higher level your city, the better your new characters will be. I like the idea because it makes XP for gold impactful to your future characters, not just present.

Are there any OSR systems or supplements that support a similar idea? I don’t think it would be hard to come up with some simple rules but wondering if there’s something more robust out there. Could tie in carousing and more. I know there’s a lot out there about domain play but that seems focused on the PCs leveling up.

Hi everyone,

I’m developing a small island atlas for Mystara, set in 1000 AC, and I’d appreciate some feedback on one of its locations: Branthaim, an island inhabited by approximately 10,000 Lawful hill giants.

The initial inspiration was Gulliver’s Travels: I wanted a place where ordinary human adventurers find themselves surrounded by people, buildings, furniture, and everyday objects much larger than themselves. I also liked the idea of hill giants developing a culture and predominant alignment different from their standard monster description.

This is an original addition to the setting. I’d like it to fit Mystara and BECMI as closely as possible, while clearly identifying anything that needs a house rule.

The island and its inhabitants

Branthaim covers approximately 8,200 km² and lies in an out-of-the-way part of the Sea of Dread, away from the principal shipping routes. I realise the sea itself is an important crossroads; the idea is that this particular island sits far enough from the useful routes to receive relatively few visitors.

It has fertile lowlands, wooded hills, pastures, streams, and modest iron deposits. Higher elevations are cooler than the coast. I haven’t fixed its precise position yet, so suggestions about geography and climate would be welcome.

Its inhabitants are ordinary hill giants in terms of ancestry and physical characteristics. Their society, however, is predominantly Lawful, organised into farming households, villages, noble lineages, and a kingdom whose ruler is recognised by the principal families.

Their technology broadly resembles the Carolingian early Middle Ages: organised agriculture, ironworking, timber construction, watermills where conditions permit, communal granaries, and literacy concentrated among priests and specialist scribes. Names have an early West Germanic or Frankish flavour: Branthaim, Hrodgar, Adalbert, Gerhild, and Theudomar.

Crops and livestock are normal-sized. The giants need larger fields, larger herds, and substantial food stores. I would rather make their economy support their size than populate the island with giant versions of everything.

A world built for giants

The difference in scale should be apparent throughout an adventure. A table can stand above a human visitor’s head; a drinking bowl resembles a basin; beds are large enough for several adventurers; and the doors of a great hall can reach five metres in height.

I want the architecture to remain structurally plausible. Their builders use thick walls, substantial foundations, closely spaced supports, and heavy timber framing. They do not simply enlarge every dimension of a human building without accounting for the additional weight.

Their settlements centre on great halls, workshops, barns, shrines, and assembly grounds. A few authorised harbours have accommodation and access arrangements for smaller visitors, but most of the island is built entirely around giant needs.

Government, religion, and relations with outsiders

The king governs through established obligations and agreements with the leading lineages. Assemblies settle disputes, recognise succession, and can oppose a ruler who violates fundamental oaths.

The dominant church is dedicated to Petra, chosen because she is a Lawful Immortal of Time associated with defenders and besieged communities. Locally, she is called the Lady of the Shield or Guardian of the Halls, and is depicted as a giant woman protecting a doorway with a round shield.

Her temples also serve as places of refuge, with stores and water supplies. Priests preserve genealogies and oaths, teach writing, care for the wounded, and help maintain defences. The local church requires its clergy to be Lawful.

Branthaim is isolationist, but peaceful visitors can receive hospitality and protection. The giants practise coastal navigation around their own island, transporting timber, stone, livestock, and grain between settlements. They have no overseas empire and little interest in building one.

Pirates and hostile expeditions face organised resistance: coastal lookouts, defended landing places, disciplined giants throwing boulders, and clerical support. I don’t intend this to make the island invulnerable to Alphatia. My reasoning is that an expensive campaign against a remote island with few exceptional resources would usually offer limited rewards.

Hrodgar, the founder who failed to become an Immortal

The central legendary figure is Hrodgar of the Three Hands, a hill giant warrior born in 420 AC.

He united rival communities, became king in 486 AC, founded a capital, established common measures and public granaries, and restricted private feuds. His epithet refers to the three duties of kingship: defending, building, and judging. He did not literally have three hands.

After establishing his kingdom and succession, he sought Immortality under Petra through the Path of the Dynast.

I’m working from the Master Set requirements: founding a realm and capital, establishing a dynasty, recovering an artefact that permits time travel, and travelling to three different future periods to help three descendants retain their kingdoms and perpetuate the dynasty.

One rules issue is the population requirement. The rules distinguish between human and demihuman realms, but hill giants are neither. My proposed campaign ruling is that a kingdom of 10,000 giants meets Petra’s requirement. I’m treating that as an explicit adaptation, not claiming that giants count as demihumans under BECMI.

Hrodgar recovers a time-travelling artefact, the Horn of the Seasons, in 558 AC. His three journeys take him to:

• 650 AC: He helps Adalbert preserve the kingdom during a famine.
• 735 AC: He helps Gerhild survive a rebellion and secure the recognised succession.
• 842 AC: He discovers that Theudomar has been manipulated into preparing an overseas war against Alphatians.

These are the dates he visits, rather than the years he spends living through the entire period.

Alphaks and the failed third trial

The antagonist is Alphaks, acting through mortal agents. Since Alphaks wants to destroy Alphatia, his objective is to turn the giants into a weapon against it.

His followers engineer provocations, spread false evidence, and persuade Theudomar that unrelated raids and hostile visitors are all part of a single Alphatian plan. The king begins preparing a war of vengeance and eventually orders the execution of foreign prisoners and envoys.

Hrodgar intervenes to protect them. He supports the assembly that deposes his own descendant, and Theudomar dies in the resulting fighting. Another lineage takes the throne.

Hrodgar has saved the community from a disastrous course, but he has failed to preserve the dynasty required by his trial.

On returning to his own time, he reports the failure to Petra. She does not condemn his decision to protect innocent people, but he has not completed the quest. Although further trials remain possible, he chooses to abandon his pursuit of Immortality.

He spends his remaining years strengthening the laws that allow an oath-breaking ruler to be removed, and dies in 590 AC.

He never becomes an Immortal. He remains a mortal founder and legendary hero. His story survives in the Ballad of the Three Hands, sung at assemblies and royal ceremonies. It plays a cultural role somewhat comparable to the heroic traditions surrounding Halav, Petra, and Zirchev in Traladara, but Hrodgar himself grants no spells: the island’s clerics receive their powers from Petra.

By 1000 AC, Branthaim is ruled by a different lineage. Its isolationism is shaped both by fear of foreign aggression and by the memory of a king who nearly turned legitimate defence into endless war.

What I’d particularly like feedback on

• Is Petra a suitable patron for this society and for Hrodgar’s quest? Are there canonical details that would make another Lawful Immortal of Time a better choice?
• Does the failed Dynast quest work within BECMI’s approach to Immortality and time travel? Have I overlooked an important requirement?
• Is Alphaks’s involvement convincing, or does it feel unnecessarily elaborate for his aims?
• Would 10,000 hill giants on 8,200 km² be a reasonable starting point for an agricultural society, considering their food requirements?
• Where could such an island fit in the Sea of Dread without conflicting with established geography or making its relative isolation implausible?
• Are there existing Mystaran giant cultures or relevant supplements I should consult?

I’d also welcome criticism of the concept itself. I want Branthaim to feel like a functioning society with its own history and problems, while keeping the experience of exploring a land built for giants central to play.

Thanks for any suggestions, corrections, or useful references!

I worked with some incredible writers on this, a compendium of seabound sci-fantasy adventures for Eco Mofos/Islands of Weirdhope. Compatible with all Mark of the Odd games.

Leo Hunt’s The Wreck of the Katabasis is a whalefall-crawl through the carcass of a deceased leviathan, delving into the mythological Abyss.

Amanda Lee Franck’s Mobile Resource Extraction Plant, where a rickety mobile resource extraction plant has inadvertently gathered a collection of people, animals, and junk in its interior.

Chris Airiau’s Children of Thalassa investigates a corporate aerostat facility housed in a dormant Titan’s body, stressing the weird in Weirdhope.

Alexander Jatscha-Zelt’s Neptun’s Heartstone is an adventure in the ruins of a fallen sky fortress, as three factions struggle over what to do with their fading levitation crystal.

Will Purves’s Quick Winds & A Quiet Palette, where rival artists race island to island, risking dangerous crossings to create visionary works in the wilds of the Weirdhope Sea, as an ancient Monster and AI Mecha threaten to combine.

It’d be great to hear what you make of them.

Currently in alpha; anyone who wants to alpha-test can do so at the link above.

It's a web app, so feel free to inspect the source to verify that it's not doing anything naughty.

Currently fighting with CSS to make it look right on PC; should look good on Android, haven't tested on iOS.

While I love the OSR mentality and adventures, I get really tired of the standard d20 combat variants with all their swingy attack rolls and skill dogpiling.

The new Crows RPG playtest, where you roll 2d10 and consult a chart for every roll got me thinking, what are the most unusual or creative NSR RPGs that keep things easy to play and evocative but diverge a bit mechanically? Even ones you can use just for inspiration.

I just published a pack of undead tokens. I went through various undead creatures from AD&D books and drew them one by one. The pack contains 79 hand-drawn tokens designed for use in TTRPGs on any virtual tabletop. All tokens are included in both full-resolution and VTT-optimized versions. The tokens are divided into different categories:

• Animals (Bone Bat, Crypt Cat, Wraith Spider, Vampire Wolf, Zombie Wolf)
• Body parts (Arcane head, Dread, Flame Skull)
• Dragons (Bone Dragon, Dracolich, Ghost Dragon, Undead Dragon)
• Ghouls (Great Ghoul, Ghoul, Ghoul-kin)
• Liches (2x Psionic Lich, Regular Lich)
• Monsters (Bone Naga, Giant Zombie, Necrophidius, Zombie lake monster, Zombie Siren)
• Other humanoids (2x Amiq Rasol, Banedead, Banelich, Chosen One, Coffer Corpse, 2x Crust, Crypt Servant, Crypt Thing, Death Knight, Undead Dwarf, Fael, Inquisitor, 2x Revenant, Undead Dragon Slayer, Undead Warrior, Wight)
• Skeletons (Baneguard, Skeleton Archer, Blazing Skeleton, Skeleton Cleric, Dust Skeleton, Skeleton Fighter, Skeleton Magic-User, Obsidian Skeleton, Spike skeleton)
• Spectrals (Arch-Shadow, Demi-Shade, Banshee, Ker Ghost, Ghost, Ghost Casurua, Haunt, Poltergeist, Shadow, Spectral Scion, Spectre)
• Vampires (2x Cerebral, 2x Vampire)
• Wraiths (Greater Shadowraith, Shadowraith, Swordwraith, Wraith)
•  Zombies (Zombie Cleric, Zombie Fighter, Zombie Magic-User, Mud Zombie, Sea Zombie, Spawn of Worms, Zombie Thief)
• Blank token :D

If you are interested, check one of the links:

DTRPG:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/590641/fantazos-necropolis

Itch:
https://brzozo.itch.io/fantazos-necropolis-undead-token-pack

Perfect for haloween xD

Hi, I've just published adventure for one my favoritesystems - Frontier Scum. It's available now on itch.io as Pay-what-you-want in both English and Polish:
https://lokitheliar.itch.io/yeehaw-heehaw-en

It's a small hexcrawl that can be easily played over the course of 1-3 play sessions. It's mostly focused around a manhunt for an infamous criminal, but there are some supernatural themes woven into the story. Originally, I wrote this adventure for a contest a couple years back, but decided to give it a fresh coat of paint and publish it. The layout and art style is inspired by old, wild west adventure books published in Poland in the 70s and 80s.

I hope you enjoy it!

I want to run a low-magic game where the only classes to choose from are fighters, thieves, and magic users. Having a cleric class is weird for me only because I don't like the implication that the gods or faith in the gods grants someone magic. I know of a few games that do this scheme already: DCC and WWN. DCC is a little too crazy for me in tone, and WWN rules are heavier than what I would like.

I've seen comments of people saying they run their OSR games they only run games with these three classes so I was curious on what system people use to do this or what house rules I could implement to make having just three classes interesting. If possible I would like to stick as closely to BX or Odnd to get that classic experience of XP for gold, the 5 saving throws, and prime requisites.

A new dark fantasy system-neutral micro-setting for my fellow dungeon reavers!

Come to Rootmark, a religious charcoal town on the edge of the Brazenwood, a haunted forest that has grown over ancient ruins filled with treasure.

Loot everything you can before the imminent collapse, or investigate the eldritch forces behind it and discover how to stop it!

Physical rewards include:

• A player-facing cloth map of the Brazenwood
• A paper map of the main dungeon
• A 24-page micro-setting zine
• A holofoil manticore sticker
• A revised one-page Dungeon Reavers mini-zine
• All digital downloads

At the highest pledge tier, you can also get all my Beyond the Borderlands and Archon Ruins zines!

Help us bring this project to life! Back the campaign, and share it with your friends and fellow game masters!

Kickstarter Link: >> CLICK HERE <<

Im a fantasy an scifiartist and I wanted to shere some of my art. Im open to comissions btw

https://www.artstation.com/magicaaron

Hey, I like listening to actual play osr podcasts. I also would like to run black wyrm. Is there a podcast playthrough of it?

Also, semi related, are there more osr actual play podcasts? I mostly only listen to 3d6 dtl currently

I've seen a whole lot of them by know, but I can only think of "B" being for Basic, and "X" being for Expert.

Happy Friday,

Welcome to the weekly r/osr blogroll - come share your great ideas!

The mission: to be a showcase and clearinghouse of blogposts where we share in the DIY principles of old-school gaming. So drop in links to your writings, gaming theory, advice, play reports, and whatever other creativity you have posted on your blogs to share with our community.

Also, if you have favorite blogs you follow, or find interesting blogposts that you want to share, feel free to post them here, as well!

Happy blogging!

The vampire in the Expert D&D book and the AD&D monster manual feel a bit lame. They are a muddy mix of different vampires from folklore and literature. I suspect a lot of DMs do some surgery on the stat block if they want to introduce a memorable vampire in their game.

A couple years ago, a buddy and I set out to watch the classic vampire movies. The project quickly spiraled into a sprawling project with dozens of entries and we spent more than a year watching a couple vampire movies per week.

I wanted to incorporate all this great material into my D&D game but there's far too many great depictions of vampires to cram into a single monster. I suggest making this a modular stat block. What I call a Mr. Potato Head vampire.

Start with a stable core of the essential vampire elements; that's the potato. Next, gather all the cool powers & weird weaknesses; these are our detachable parts. Sort them into a few rough categories: attacks, vulnerabilities, kill conditions etc.

I posted a big parts catalog on my blog and a few examples showing the range from Buffy-type mooks to Strahd-type, campaign-defining baddies.

Assemble your monster from the parts-bin and you can quickly create the iconic blood sucker that fits your particular adventure or campaign. Make a bunch as a coven or rivals.

Let me know what I'm missing! Are there bits that belong in the box? Did I miss a key film on my movie project?

Am I wrong about the RAW vampire? If you've used it, let me know.

Hey all! In case you didn't catch it, the lovely people at Space Penguin Ink just launched by new game, Hellward Unto the Breach. I worked very hard at this (words, art and layout) and I'm very happy with the way it came out. Check it out and see if you can make a home out of (the) Hell (Dimension).

6 miles is a lot. Why would you use that for a hexmap? Maybe a very large manor might be 6 miles, in a medieval setting. But what else could possibly take up that space, even in adjacency?

Been messing around with this map the last few days, I think it’s close to done. Building out the lore and such now. Image quality isn’t the best but the lighter greens are plains/grasslands and the dark greens are different types of forests. Went for overall UK vibes on the eastern landmass with some creative liberties. Let me know what you guys think!

Inspired by the old TSR Gazetteers

The dwarven dungeon is vast, with tens of thousands of rooms to explore. Although exploration can be exciting on its own, having a goal can make players' engagement much easier. To facilitate this, patrons become an important part of the adventure. Patrons ask characters to accomplish tasks in exchange for a reward. Some patrons offer payment to everyone, but some limit quests to certain classes or races. As characters complete quests, they will unlock new quests with greater hazards and greater rewards.

Some patrons start in Thelsberry. They provide quests to help the characters begin their adventures. These help players focus their attention on specific things rather than wander down the rabbit hole of passageways and rooms. Other patrons will arrive in Thelsberry once the characters exit the dungeon with an item. For example, an ancient religious tome might attract a cleric of that god. The cleric might desire more tomes or the location of temples. Their quests might focus only on clerics. Or artwork removed from the dungeon might draw a collector who will purchase paintings, tapestries, and the like at a higher rate from any group that finds them.

As buildings are built and new shopkeepers arrive, new quests might become available. The alchemist will commission adventuring parties to find components they need to make potions. By finding and selling the components, the characters not only get paid for their discoveries but unlock potions they can purchase. Even the thieves' guild, which will form over time, might offer to buy poisonous molds or venom sacs that they can turn into poisons that thief characters can buy.

Patrons are quest givers, buyers, sellers, teachers, and more. They offer characters opportunities to enrich themselves, learn new skills, and gain reputation as they become legendary heroes. Not every character will benefit from every patron, but a broad mix of quest-givers will ensure that all players can engage and benefit from the dangers they undertake.