Repair on The OSRchivist

Getting MoSh working on FoundryVTT v14

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:00 +0100

In this post, I describe how I got the unofficial MoSh Mothership module for FoundryVTT working on v14, despite it not being updated.

I wanted to run a couple of oneshots of Mothership using FoundryVTT, but unfortunately ran into some trouble after updating FoundryVTT to v14.You see, Mothership has its own dedicated app/VTT called Mothership Companion, so there’s no official FoundryVTT package.Instead, somebody called futilrevenge made an unofficial version, which works quite well.However, as per this writing, that package does not work immediately; in fact, it hasn’t since the release of FoundryVTT v14 on September 26^th 2025.

Fortunately, when I looked at the issues on the GitHub repository for MoSh, I saw that somebody had already flagged this as a needed fix.On top of that, three weeks ago, a user named ailstyn posted a solution: the system.json file just needs to be flagged as v14 compatible.That turned out to be ridiculously simple!

On my install, I put my FoundryVTT data under ~/.local/share/, though you may want to find out where it is on your install.From there, the file I needed was in /FoundryVTT/Data/systems/mosh/, called “system.json”, as indicated by ailstyn.Opening that up in an editor, I scrolled all the way to the bottom to find:"compatibility": { "minimum": 13, "maximum": 13, "vefified": 13 }All I needed to do was change the "maximum": 13 to "maximum": 14 and Bob’s your uncle.

I haven’t run a game with it yet, but everything does seem to work.I hope it’ll help you out as well.

Zungeon25

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0100

Back on January 1^st 2025, Idle Cartulary posted The Zungeon Manifesto, which argued that “[z]ines in TTRPGs in 2024 has come to mean ‘A5, highly produced booklet’, but that isn’t what zines have traditionally been.”The post is an argument for making custom, home-made zines—warts and all.Quickly, Nova added an Itch Zungeon Jam 2025 to match the post, and encouraged the community to submit.I’d commented on that post on January 2^nd as a promise to myself I’d participate.Cut to today, December 30^th, and me realizing I’d pushed this off for the entirety of the year.Well, you know what?This is a promise to myself that I intended to keep!

Yesterday and today, I cobbled together a quick adventure using some random prompts, a bit of improv, and a quick and dirty one-pager was born.I don’t know why I put it off for so long, really.I guess I was afraid it’d turn out bad?I mean, it’s not a polished product by any means, but that was also the point of the Zungeon post to begin with.I think it was also part that I didn’t dare put anything out there, because what if people thought it was stupid?

Well, I did put it out there.The Crone of Ogrebelch Quarry is now on Itch.io.It’s cobbled together in LibreOffice, and in my frantic dash to keep my promise to myself, it’s not playtested (yet).But you know what?I put something on Itch.io.I never thought I would, but I have.So thanks to Idle Cartulary and thanks to the 1e Manifesto for giving me the push to just put something out there.

Session 9 Report Hole in the Oak

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0100

Previous session report can be found here.First session report can be found here.

Overall

On Friday, December 19^th, I ran the ninth session of my Hole in the Oak game for OSE via FoundryVTT.In this post I’ll recap what happened, and note down my lessons learned.

This whole session was focused around the heretic gnomes in the southeastern portion of the map.The players had started the session right outside their dungeon area, and were just about to enter when we ended last time.They spent a little time trying to spy ahead to see what was going on, which offered some good opportunities to use items creatively.After using a handmirror to glance underneath the door, the PCs figured to

When they entered, I had the three gnomes on guard be more busy with watching out for lizards than dealing with the PCs.I think that became a fun little vignette that showed that there’s more to the world than just the PCs.What was also good was that it gave me the opportunity to portray the gnomes as more indifferent to them, rather than openly antagonistic.

They spent some careful time talking with those gnomes before they started asking more pointed questions, such as how many of them there were.I took the opportunity to have the gnomes themselves become a bit wary of these intruders, and they were led deeper into the area, so that they could meet the leaders.

The PCs started asking them about the rest of the dungeon, and I thought that was such a good idea I just gave them broad descriptions of areas, so they know what to expect and how to plan next.As they kept asking more, they also veered into what the gnomes actually do here, which led to their worship of the stump god.I took that perfect opportunity to start making the gnomes a little too eager to have them learn about the god, and started moving more and more gnomes into the areas around them for added creepiness.

All this had the exact effect that I was hoping for: the PCs got more and more weirded out and figured to get out of there quickly before it would turn all Wicker Man.I figured it’d be interesting to just have them leave, because that way the PCs have a lot more information about the dungeon and can now start making more informed choices.

What Went Well

Playing Monsters as Neutral/Friendly

When the PCs met the gnomes, I remembered to roll a reaction roll for them.The outcome was neutral/indifferent, which was an interesting approach.I also run a game of Abomination Vaults in PF2e, and almost every encounter there has descriptions like “cannot be reasoned with” or “will fight until destroyed”, and so on.The contrast to this OSE module is huge, as just having these gnomes—who do have the goal of sacrificing people to the stump—also just be normal people is really entertaining.I felt it gave me more opportunities than with the Abomination Vaults to actually show something of the gnomes and what they want, which is more interesting.

Signposting to the PCs

I thoroughly enjoyed how the PCs were picking up on the small, creepy hints of cult activity in their interactions with the gnomes.As they started becoming more suspicious, I started moving gnome tokens around to surround them every so often.Coupled with the lead gnomes asking if they wanted to stay over or rest just a little too eagerly, the effect was quite nice.I was quite happy to have that encounter but also to ensure that it didn’t just end in battle.Now, they know how this faction is, that they’re not fully okay, and that will probably be a lot more interesting down the line.

Lessons Learned

Using FoundryVTT’s Built-in A/V

I wanted to try out using Foundry’s built-in audio/video solution, since I finally got my SSL set up correctly (which is a requirement).Fortunately, the players were willing to test it out as an alternative to Discord.Unfortunately, however, it ended up costing us almost 40 minutes of fiddling around with it.While it worked okay for most of the time, one of the players got weird issues that ended up muting her microphone.Another issue ended up being that one of the players took notes in a Word document, but since FoundryVTT only uses keyboard keybindings, they couldn’t use push-to-talk unless they were fully tabbed back into the game.With Discord, they were able to have Discord and their notes on one screen, and the game on another.So, all in all, it turns out not to have been an ideal solution for my group.

Remembering Infravision

As the PCs were exploring the first guard room, and using a hand mirror underneat the door to do so, I forgot that they were fully in the dark, so they couldn’t see that the gnomes’ felt hats were red.It should have been all shades of grey.Overall, infravision keeps messing me up.Particularly since, as I understand it, it should mainly be useful for navigation, but to actually see detail you’d need light.It’s a small thing, and we just retconned it when one of the players reminded me of it, but it’s still tricky to remember!

Session 8 Report Hole in the Oak

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 16:04:17 +0100

Previous session report can be found here.First session report can be found here.Next session report is here.

Overall

On Friday, October 24^th, I ran the eighth session of my Hole in the Oak game for OSE via FoundryVTT.In this post I’ll recap what happened, and note down my lessons learned.

The PCs continued in their dungeon exploration from the room with the black skeletons that they’d found last time.After more trepidation, one of the players decided to specifically spend a turn to go check the walls for secret doors.That was a great move, because they found the hidden pantry stuffed with jars of hair, nails, and teeth.Fortunately, they’d run into Hazrad the Unholy in a random encounter in a previous session, so this time, when they found the note “For the collection of Hazrad the Unholy”, they could immediately link the two.

They quickly clocked that the door to the north was a one-way door, so carefully made sure to keep it open.I was very happy to see they thought of locking the door in place somehow, and could point out that this is what iron spikes are for.When faced with spectres locked in combat just beyond it, they decided to engage with the pair.I was quite pleased to see that they put together the rumours and info they research earlier, about the White League, to identify who the figures fighting were.In this case, a member of the White League and a lizardfolk antagonist.So, they went to attack the lizardfolk in help of the White League ghost, and quickly took care of business.

In their further exploration, they pieced together that the route to the left would lead them to Tom Fool, whom they’d met last time.So, they decided to head to the right side, and start knocking on some doors there.Since I was getting tired by this point, that’s where we cut the session.

What Went Well

Using a Dungeon Time Tracker

I felt like I had a better handle on dungeon time passing, because I was using a dungeon time tracker again.Essentially, it was a set of boxes that I could tick and annotate, but it helped me remember what is going on when.It also helped in negotiating the passage of time with the players.Frequently, I asked something along the lines of “Okay, while the thief is doing that, what is everybody else doing?”.That question really helped clarify what action was going around the table, and helped structure the play.

Being firm on what I expect of the hirelings

Again in this session, it came up that one of the players wanted to ask a hireling for additional information.Learning from last time, I simply said that they’re the players’ characters, so they know as much as they do.If they want the hirelings to do something, they should just announce that they do things.One of the players started incorporating that a little differently after, stating that their PC would ask the hireling to do something, and then move the hireling themselves.I think that’s a great way to incorporate the hirelings, and I was happy that it created a bit more clarity as well.

Lessons Learned

Keeping a consistent time across sessions

In using the time tracker, I did realize that I’d not used on a few sessions but also used a separate one when I did use it.As a result, the PCs essentially had a magically-resetting lantarn, because we never got to the oil running out in one session.So, instead, I realized I need to have a singular tracking system that stays with the players across sessions.

The “Player-facing” map is not fully player-facing

Even though the adventure I run comes with what it calls a “player-facing” dungeon map for digital tabletops, it isn’t fully.Specifically, the one-way door was marked on the map itself, which meant that one of the players could see the arrow pointing.As a result, it was easy for him to conclude that they needed to take extra care.Now, I’m not one to be interested in creating a “gotcha” for the players, but it could have been a nice surprise.

Take care of who I have selected in FoundryVTT

For this adventure, I roll for random encounters every turn (as indicated by the module, to make more weird stuff happen more frequently).Unfortunately, in FoundryVTT, it always takes the token you’ve selected as the person rolling the die.Now, that was fine for as long as I was rolling in DM-only visibility.But, somewhere along the session, I set my rolls to public.On top of that, I selected a “heretic gnome” in the next room over, because the players were asking some questions about what they could smell and hear there.So, as I rolled the next random encounter, it broadly announced to the players that the Heretic Gnome rolled a d6.It’s, of course, my fault in this case, and I should pay a bit closer attention to what the settings are before I role.Overall, not a terrible thing, but still something that I could have looked out for.

Session 7 Report Hole in the Oak

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 14:39:10 +0200

Previous session report can be found here.First session report can be found here.Next session report is here.

Overall

On Friday, October 24^th, I ran the seventh session of my Hole in the Oak game for OSE via FoundryVTT.

After the battle with the spider in the hallway, the players wanted to move on through the door.They’d spent quite some time worrying about whether the door was trapped, illusory, or just trying to get them in some other way.Eventually, they made the wonderful decision to just knock.I love rewarding common-sense thinking, so I chose to have the troglodyte (which a random roll told me was hiding around the corner) walk up and answer them.It was Tomfool, so I figured he must be a little innocent and naive, and so I played him up like that.

After a little chat, which was amiable, they wanted to know if Tomfool could open the door.He answered he’d have to go get his brothers, which the PCs quickly shied him away from. Instead, they asked how they could get around, and Tomfool let them know that they could go around north or south.So, to avoid the ghouls in the north, they decided to go around south and face either the obviously trapped skull door or the unexplored guano cave.

They ended up skipping the skull door and went in the next doorway.There, they found a sand-covered room with two black skeletons at the other end.This led to a number of incremental tests where they tossed something near them; took a step inside the room; shot an arrow at them; and finally snuck close.For each of these, the black skeletons were absolutely still.We ended the session there, with the players deciding to act more boldly at the start of the next session.

What Went Well

Jumping in after two months

Our play schedule is a little chaotic.Both my players as well as myself have had stuff come in between our fortnightly sessions, and before you know it it’s been two months between sessions.I was happy with how easy it was to pick up where we left off and how easy it was to scan the next room and run it.

Lessons Learned

One player still treating hireling as DM NPC

In this session one of the players again wanted to ask a hireling whether they had additional knowledge of the situation.I’ve been keeping that at bay by not having them provide useful information, because they simply do not have it.At the same time, I should probably make a note of what it is they’re asking after.I might see a pattern in what they want or when they want it that might help me guide a little better.At the same time, I also want to make sure they explore on their own accord and face weird mysteries, so this may also be one of those things a referee doesn’t have to solve.

Infravision rules

I still don’t know how to properly work the infravision rules in FoundryVTT.This session, the PCs could see the black skeletons at the end of the room, even though their torchlight didn’t extend that far.I’d asked about half a year ago, but sadly there was no answer.Well, except from the person who asked a year ago and also did not receive an answer.I guess the answer might be that it’s not possible yet.It did make me rethink using the FoundryVTT features with this level of granularity.Perhaps it’s better to just work with more abstract rooms that the party is in, rather than having a drawing that represents the exact room.

RPGaDay 2025 31: Reward

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Wow, I can’t believe I’m actually at August 31st right now.I took on this challenge because I wanted to see if I could put something up every day in August.It didn’t all have to be great—in fact, I was sure it wouldn’t have been—but I wanted to post something every day.Taking part in #Dungeon23 taught me that it is more important to put something up than it being good.There’s always time to edit afterwards.So, I’m very proud of myself for having posted every day.I did notice that as time went on, it got easier to fill out a random table.Simply making a few of them does give you the experience to create more.I hope that this will help me make solid tables in the future.

For now, a d8 table of rewards—other than treasure or XP.

Rewards Other Than Treasure Or XP

d8	Reward
1	A feast in the PCs honor
2	A raucous night of drinking in the tavern
3	Statues are commissioned of the PCs
4	A bard composes an epic song about the PCs
5	The PCs are made honorary citizens
6	The PCs are given a home in the community
7	The wider community will be told of the PCs achievements
8	An annual festival with games will be organized in the PCs honor

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 30: Experience

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

There are multiple ways to understand an experience from the past.Historical events are transmitted in one way or another.Sometimes it’s reconstructing events from relics by considering their location and distribution.Sometimes it’s decoding how people wrote about the things happening around them.So, for today, here’s a d8 table of various ways of understanding an experience from the past.

I hope it’ll inspire some ways of having the old protrude into your adventures.

Means of Experiencing the Past

d8	PC Experience
1	Received a vision of events past
2	Read in a historical record
3	Decoded from a bas relief
4	Interpreted from a series of paintings
5	Clued together from a historical play
6	Distilled truth from epic poems
7	Contrasted popular folk songs
8	Investigated the oral history

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 29: Connect

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

“Common” as a shared language in fantasy games has always felt like an odd compromise to me.On the one hand, it’s odd to have a singular language that everybody speaks to communicate with everybody else.On top of that, where is “common” from? What giant empire gathered such power that everybody uses that language as a baseline?There’s not even a real analogue of a language like that on earth.Sure, English may have the most total speakers (though Mandarin Chinese has the most first-language speakers) but by no means could we argue that every human being on earth is fully fluent in English as a shared language.On the other hand, at what point do you draw the arbitrary line of having separate languages?Will each species have its own language?Each kingdom?Each province?At some point, you also just want people to connect so they can get to the interesting bits.

Nevertheless, to help me think outside the box, today’s d8 table is for different means of trying to communicate without using a spoken language.

Communication Without Spoken Language

d8	Medium of communication
1	Using pantomime and gestures.
2	Through tonality in song.
3	Drawing pictures in sand.
4	Pointing and holding the other persons hand.
5	Using objects to try and get the right associations.
6	Communicating via colored flags.
7	Performing a small play demonstrating the meaning.
8	Showing what they intend to happen in the hopes people catch on.

Hey, I didn’t say it’d be effective communication!

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 28: Suspense

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

I once read about Hitchcock movies and the difference between fear and suspense.Fear being an immediate response to an immediate stressor.Suspense, on the other hand, is a response to an imagined negative future.When I think of this in the context of the OSR, Mothership immediately springs to mind.I dislike jumpscare horror but I really enjoy horror that creates a sense of unease.So, in that light, here’s a d8 table of elements to add a sense of unease to your suspenseful Mothership games:

Elements To Add A Sense of Unease

d8	Description
1	The base which should be vibrant with life is deathly silent and devoid of people.
2	Every single light has been turned off, and no computer is active.
3	Everybody smiles at the PCs but they have dead-eyed stares as they do it.
4	The alien ship that must be investigated seems fully organic in nature.
5	The sound of measured breathing is constantly heard via the radio.
6	The biochem lab has a set of biohazard containment units that have broken doors.
7	There’s massive amounts of blood everywhere but not a single body to be found.
8	The entire base is empty, except for a single, huge pile of dismembered bodies in the common area.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 27: Tactic

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

At some point, I would like to try my hand at making a flowchart for monster tactics.Today’s not that day, but it’s a thing that’s been on my mind.For now, a random table of chosen actions might see me through as well.So, here’s d8 approach to combat for a monster to take:

Randomly Chosen Monster Combat Actions

d8	Tactic
1	Sneak behind the PCs to surprise attack them.
2	Hide and sneak away from the PCs.
3	Get backup and flank the PCs.
4	Fortify the place and try to trap the PCs.
5	Use fire to cut off PCs escape and trap them.
6	Try to get the high ground and shoot at the PCs.
7	Make noise to attract something worse than it.
8	Bellow, roar, and try to intimidate the PCs.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 26: Nemesis

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Today’s d8 table is for a set of motivations for a nemesis NPC character.To me, a nemesis isn’t always a grand vizier, super evil kind of person.In fact, more often than not they aren’t.I prefer bad guys to be just regular people, perhaps with different ideas on how to solve the same problems.So, here’s a small table to inspire some NPC motivations.

NPC Motivations

d8	NPC Description
1	A PCs rival from back in their youth.
2	Somebody who is jealous of the PC’s success.
3	Somebody who is after the same thing the PCs are.
4	Somebody who needs the treasure the PCs want to help others.
5	Somebody who is being blackmailed to go against the PCs.
6	Somebody who is being corrupted by a curse.
7	Somebody who hates the PCs just out of spite.
8	Somebody who just thinks its fun to annoy the PCs.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 25: Challenge

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Today’s entry is a d8 table of type of challenges NPCs and PCs could get into.After all, not every contest has to be a fight to the death.A one-on-one could also be resolved in the field of public spectacle!What do you think?Is this a handy table?

Alternative Conflicts to Life-and-Death

d8	Challenge
1	Challenge to a duel, first hit wins.
2	Challenge to a duel, first blood wins.
3	Challenge to a duel, to the death!
4	Challenge to a rap battle.
5	Challenge to a drinking contest.
6	Challenge to a fist fight.
7	Challenge to a public debate.
8	Challenge to a puzzle battle.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 24: Reveal

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Today’s random table is a d8 of ways that a secret door reveals the next area.Let me know what you think!

d8	Reveal of secret passage
1	Stones in the wall slide backwards and then to the side.
2	An illusory wall ripples like a pond as PCs step through it.
3	A bookcase pops out slightly, and can now swing as a door.
4	Stones in the wall slowly slide downwards, dust settling.
5	A panel in the floor pops up, and enters into a small passage.
6	A passageway is hidden behind a heavy tapestry.
7	Stones give way to a smooth tunnel, going down like a slide.
8	A panel opens up underneath the PCs, causing them to fall down.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 23: Recent

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

I use random encounters in one of two ways: either it’s what’s happening right now, this turn; or, alternatively, it’s what around the next corner.However, I’m starting to realize it’s also good to hint at what’s to come.After all, rangers need to have something to track too, right?So, I wanted to make a little table with signs that things are nearby or used to be here.Below is a quick d10 table of traces left of recent interaction in a hex.I hope it’ll be useful to you as well!

d10	What trace is left of recent interactions in this space?
1	Spoor of some wildlife.
2	A strange smell coming from nearby.
3	Traces of a campfire, coals still smoldering.
4	The site of a battle, with some bodies robbed of belongings.
5	Nearby sounds of equipment clanking and boots running away.
6	Sounds of people hushing each other in the undergrowth nearby.
7	A bowl still rotating on the ground, coming to a standstill.
8	Sounds of nearby horses, growing fainter.
9	Smoke billowing out of a small building.
10	A person on the edge of death, trying to speak.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 22: Ally

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Ever since reading Torchbearer, I’ve been struck with their description of adventurers.Lousy, good-for-nothing, down-on-their-luck losers.Who would ever want to become an adventurer?Only short life and a horrible death awaits you.It’s the question I now have when I think of why anybody would wnat to become a porter hireling for a group of PCs.Who in their right mind would do that?

So, to help with that idea, here’s a table of d10 possible motivations for hirelings!Let me know what you think about it.

d6	Why did they go to adventuring?
1	Needs to pay off student loans. This is the only job that requires no experience.
2	Addicted to adrenaline. Nothing quite hits like dungeons.
3	Can’t find any other work. Nobody will hire me.
4	Stuck in the job. Need this job to pay for last job.
5	Get rich quick. Just one good score needed.
6	Don’t want to fit in regular jobs. This provides freedom.
7	Trying to find enough like-minded adventurers to start my own group.
8	I want to see the world. Travel is included in adventuring!
9	I want to be like the cool adventurers the bards tell stories about!
10	I have a lot of violent tendencies and this is a socially acceptable outlet.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 21: Unexpected

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

For today’s entry, I want to pay an homage to Fiona Maeve Geist’s entry on pp. 59–60 of Knock! Issue 1.In that entry, Fiona has a d100 table of “It Has Something In Its Pockets!”, for random goblin items.Some are useful, most are strange, a few are downright outlandish.I’m not quite as creative as to make a d100 table, but I wanted to do a small d10 of weird things that a goblin will have in its pockets.

d10	Item
1	A small jar labelled “Pickled Farts”. Absolutely not a good idea to open it.
2	A manifesto on the founding of a goblin constitution and governing body.
3	A curedly drawn treasure map. It kind of looks like a sick giraffe? Who knows, it might be real.
4	A heavily annotated draft of a musical about a small-town goblin wanting to make it big.
5	A small statue of a goblin. It has a different expression on its face every time you look away.
6	The Sponge of Growing. It expands slightly when exposed to water. You know, like a regular sponge.
7	A rat-sized crown, with the inscription “All Hail King Squeaky III” on the inside.
8	A stack of twelve papers, each saying “Dem elves did it.”
9	A single sock, suspiciously like that one sock that you lost years ago.
10	A little stuffed ogre toy that squeaks when you squeeze it.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 20: Enter

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Today’s random table is a selection of various ways to enter a dungeon.Roll a d8 to get ideas for an entry, ranging from common to ephemeral!

d8	Type of entry to a dungeon
1	A tunnel breached into the dungeon
2	An old masonry wall crumbled down into new tunnels
3	An entryway hidden deep inside caves
4	A trap door in a basement leads down into a dungeon
5	A stone slab locks away a mausoleum
6	Tumbling down an open tree trunk lies a new area
7	Climbing up through dense trees leads to a fantastical new land
8	The dungeon can be reached when you slip between cracks in a non-euclidian direction.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 19: Destiny

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

I figured to create a table of star readings, perhaps to be done by some astrologer.Honestly, I’m not happy about this one.I don’t know, it seems to lack a little flair or feeling to it.Have any suggestions to improve it?

d8	Star Sign	Result
1	The Goblin	Mischief abounds. Small items will be lost today to reappear tomorrow
2	The Handmaid	Good fortune! Small damages to items or clothing are mended in the morning
3	The Griffin	Danger lurks. Increase the risk of wilderness encounters by one step
4	The Longbow	Skies are exceptionally clear today. People can spot each other 25% sooner
5	The Shield	The day is gloomier and darker. It’s easier to hide, especially at night
6	The Drake	Hot weather is approaching. A heatwave comes!
7	The Kobold	Beware of ambushes today. Small things skitter in small nooks and crannies
8	The Ogre	A great strength opposes you. Facing it head-on is not advisable.

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 18: Sign

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

I like cycling around my area.The Netherlands has an amazing cycling network covering the entire country.These routes are specifically signposted, and there’s clear maps and guides detailing where to go.So, when I cycle, there are a pluriform of signs on my routes: road signs for cars, road signs for bicycles, marker signs for the cycling network, and hiking signposts.Each of these has a specific form dedicated for a specific audience, and varied levels of maintenance.

So, inspired by that, here’s a random table of possible signage styles:

d10	Sign style
1	A painted stone obelisk
2	A carved obelisk
3	A wooden pole with directional signs
4	A painted stone by the side of the road
5	Small cairns without markings
6	Pillars marked with hieroglyphs
7	Symbols carved into trees
8	System of notches in trees and stones
9	Magical illusions floating in the air
10	No signage at all

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 17: Renew

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

For “renew”, I immediately thought of restocking dungeons.It’s a system I haven’t been involved with much yet, because I’ve run a lot of shorter modules rather than long-form campaigns.However, I want to start trying my hand at some of these mechanics.So, to help prepare myself, I’ve made a little table to guide restocking.If you have any ideas for improvement or if this has been helpful to you, drop me a line on Bluesky and let me know!

d10	Restock
1	Goblins. There’s always goblins
2	The previous faction’s enemies
3	The previous faction, plus reinforcements
4	The previous faction, with a bigger monster as leader
5	The previous faction, plus goblins
6	The undead, risen from the previous faction
7	A pack of wild animals
8	Bandits, moving in after looting
9	A dragon, claiming the space as its own
10	A wizard, up to arcane and mysterious business

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

Session 6 Report Hole in the Oak

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 17:00:00 +0200

Previous session report can be found here.Next session report is here.First session report can be found here.

Overall

On Friday August 15^th, I ran the sixth session of my Hole in the Oak game for OSE via FoundryVTT.The PCs had returned to the Hole in the Oak from the town along with their two new hirelings—a porter and a torchbearer.After a little debate about their option moving forward, they chose to explore the hallway with the enchanted statue.They were quite clever, posting a retainer behind them with an oil flask in hand ready to burn any sneaky ghouls.Seeing the statue of a hunter with two dogs in between two mirrors made them quite hesitant to move forward, and they spent quite some time trying to work out how to get there.A main theory they had was that the two opposing mirrors possibly trapped the hunter (as a myth goes about witches), and they spent some time trying to cover one and then both mirrors with cloaks.Given that they were quite paranoid about the mirrors, I chose to interpret it as them not looking into them (which would activate the hunter).

They concluded that they’d done nothing bad there, and moved forward yet again to the archway with the crab spider.They were quite certain there was something there, but couldn’t quite get to a solid solution.Firstly, they tried tossing some stones into the hallway, which I figured to reward with a listen check (as they were clearly trying to bait whatever the “something” was they suspected was there).However, that listen check ended up a fail.Next, they used a halberd to try and poke the entry way, and then again the stones in front.So, I figured that was worth one retry on the listen skill, counting it as the assassin’s “listen at doors” option.Sadly, once more that was a fail.

So, knowing there would be trouble, they moved forward to have the spider drop down and win a surprise roll.Wonderfully enough, they had the magic user prepped with a sleep spell, which instantly knocked down the spider.A the rules go, that meant any bladed weapon would give it a guaranteed kill.

What Went Well

Improvising venom extraction

The assassin concluded that since a crab spider would have venom, they wanted to extract that for a poison.Given that the assassin has a specific “poison” ability, I figured that they would probably know how to remove venom sacs.I improved that as “one dose” of poison, using the “death in 1d4 turns” description from the crab spider as the result.I noticed that it was quite easy to improv because, well, that’s all there is to it.Because there’s no big structure or rule set for this, it’s easy to just label it and call for an effect.What I suppose I could have done is to argue that they can extract the sacs but that’s not the same as having the poison.It would motivate them to get back to town before some deadline I’d have to set.

Pointing our the hirelings & retainers are for the players

This session again saw the players ask me for something from the NPCs, as though they were my characters.So, when they wanted the magic user retainer to inspect the statue, they asked him via me.This time, I plainly told them he was their character, and asked them what it is they wanted him to do.They wanted him to check whether it was magical, but again I bounced that back asking how he was going to do that.I think that did spur them to think a little differently about the problem, so I think that was a positive influence.

Lessons Learned

Double-check the VTT before the game

FoundryVTT just had a big update for the OSE settings and modules.Part of that is a big update on items and monster images, as well as correcting some mistakes in the text.As it turns out, the modules that I had loaded were all depracated or moved, and so weren’t available during the session.We could still play, and it was easy enough to work with, but it was something I should have checked beforehand.

Better pokerface

While the PCs were exploring the mirrors and the hallway after, I was really enjoyin how they were going about it.I felt they were really creatively trying to figure out what the issue was!So, I apparently had a big smile on my face.The PCs took this as the smile of somebody who was waiting to spring the trap on them, so they redoubled their search.There’s nothing particularly bad about that, of course, but it would be good to keep my cards a little closer to my chest.

RPGaDay 2025 16: Overcome

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Today’s topic is “Overcome”, so I figured to make a table of fun little situation seeds.None of these have solutions or outcomes that I think are relevant.They’re just ideas that seem fun to engage with.Let me know if you find any of these useful!

d10	Overcome
1	A dungeon in the middle of collapse, filled with traps and monsters
2	A curse has fallen over a village, affecting everyone who steps foot in it
3	A monster in the dungeon is unkillable though cannot leave the dungeon
4	A vicious lie has been spread about the PCs, causing all to believe them to be villains
5	An ancient plague spreads the land, and its only recorded cure is an extinct plant from a remote forest
6	The guide who led the party deep into the dungeon snuffs the torch and runs away
7	An undending blizzard surrounds a mountain housing a monastary with the ancient relic
8	The evil necromancer is the town’s most beloved benefactor, unbeknownst to the people
9	A middling goblin tribe has found advanced space weaponry in a crashed interstellar ship
10	A PC is beset by psychic attacks by a monster hunting them from afar

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 15: Deceive

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Lies and truth are interesting things in an OSR experience.I’ve been used to modern games, where there’s an “insight” skill or something similar that the players will roll to check objective reality.Outside of specific spells, such as Detect Lie or items such as a Candle of Truth, OSR games tend not to have that possibility.To me, a skill such as insight suggests a mechanical means to test objective reality with absolute certainty.Roll below the DC? You’re probably being fed lies. Roll above? You have 100% certainty of the outcome.Of course, you could roll in secret as a referee but at that point, what’s the use of the skill?The PC is left with the same amount of uncertainty as before.

The resolution is, of course, player skill not character skill—the players should be the ones drawing conclusions.I don’t remember where I read it, unfortunately, but I remember reading a piece of advice that even suggested telling the PCs outright whether something is truthful or not.Essentially, the advice was to say: “The inkeeper looks at you, and lies: ‘Oh, yes, the cave is absolutely safe, don’t worry about it’.”At first, it seemed counterintuitive to me.Wouldn’t this give them perfect knowledge of the world around them?At the same time, I see it helps build trust: what the referee says is true.The NPCs may be lying, but the referee isn’t.And, aside from that, now that they know, what will the PCs do next?

So, to accompany this thought, here’s a quick d10 table of ways to lie, to help me vary up how NPCs are deceiving the PCs:

d10	Type of lie
1	An obvious lie
2	A lie with a nugget of truth
3	A lie of omission
4	A truth with a bit of a lie
5	A misleading truth
6	An unrelated truth
7	A white lie
8	An exaggeration
9	A minimization
10	A total bluff

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 14: Mystery

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

The following table is to help kickstart a mystery.The tens on a d30 will produce who has committed the crime, ranging from distant to close relation.The ones will then detail what crime it is.Hopefully, this will spawn some good ideas for interesting events.

Tens	Who	Ones	What
1–10	A stranger	1	Murder most foul
11–20	An acquaintance/friend	2	Abduction
21–30	A family member	3	Theft
		4	Embezzlement
		5	Fraud
		6	Disappearance
		7	Vandalism
		8	Blackmail
		9	Mugging
		10	Assault

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 13: Darkness

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Darkness seems to be a pivotal thing for an OSR experience.Darkness is foreboding and dangerous.The OSE SRD notes that “[a]ll non-human monsters and many demihuman races have a special kind of vision that allows them to see in the dark. This is called infravision.”Imagine being in a space where you can’t see anything, but everything in the dark can see you—terrifying.OSRIC on p.124 of the core rules dedicates six paragraphs to light, vision, lightsources, and the resources to keep them alit.The last paragraph specifically points out the risks of intelligent creatures realizing an approaching light means people are coming.After all of this, a paragraph is spent on infravision, noting that almost all subterranean creatures have it.

In OD&D, infravision was a 3rd level Magic User spell (p.25 of Dungeons & Dragons Book I: Men & Magic).None of the classes of characters had any infravision.By the time D&D Basic Set Rulebook (B/X)—or Moldvay—rolls around, dwarves, elves, and so on all have infravision.However, on p.B21 it does note that you cannot read with it.OSRIC, comparatively, notes on p.124 that “[i]nfravision does not detect colours and is of little help while searching or making minute examinations, so sapient creatures such as orcs may well prefer torchlight even if they possess infravision.”Basically, infravision gets strongly limited to keep darkness interesting.The AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide (1e) has a section deducated to infravision on p.59, which has some choice words on its usefulness.Most things are the same temperature within a room, so “a room in a dungeon might look completely blank.”In fact, it notes that “vision of this sort is roughly equal to human norm on a dark and cloudy night at best.”Now, I’ve trudged through my house in the dark of the night trying to reach the kitchen, and it’s darned tricky!

Essentially, these sources convince me that an OSR approach to a dungeon should be almost like old submarine movies: two groups of people trying to be quiet as they each try to figure out where the other is.How crucial light management suddenly becomes!Whether to have it lit or snuffed.How many torches you can snuff before you run out.How much light you have left to bring yourself back.It reminds me of managing oxygen in Subnautica or braving the depths in Tears of the Kingdom (which, itself, has a strong bottom-of-the-ocean vibe).

So, that made me think of scary things in the dark.What happens when there’s nothing in particular happening?What are things we imagine coming from the dark?So, here’s a table of d12 things the PCs may perceive/hallucinate when they stare deep into the darkness when nothing is there to be seen:

Roll	Result
1	A distant sound of chuckling
2	A shape moving in the darkness
3	A loud bellowing echoing far off in the complex
4	The darkness seems to close in
5	The party makes too much noise to notice anything
6	A flickering of something that is gone as quickly as it appeared
7	Peering into the darkness throws you off balance
8	The PC loses track of time before they snap out of it
9	A voice speaks from just besides a PC’s ear
10	A weariness overtakes the PC
11	An involuntary shudder surges through the PC
12	Odd dark red and purplish shapes swirl ahead

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 12: Path

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Today’s prompt, “Path”, lead me to think about a feature I don’t really describe much.I’ll describe the journey somewhere or events that happen.I’ll describe moments of rest, or unique features of a landscape being traversed.I don’t, however, tend to describe the state of the road that the PCs travel.

So, for today’s random table, I’ve made a randomized for road conditions.As before, either read the outcome straight down the line, or roll 1d8 twice and mix and match.

d8	Path style	Path direction
1	Wild and overgrown	Meandering
2	Muddy path	Cutting through undergrowth
3	Dirt path	Displacing plants
4	Wood slat path	Following the land
5	Gravel pathway	Straightening a path
6	Rough stone pathway	Mostly straight
7	Paved stone pathway	Cutting through nature
8	Solid stone pathway	Straight as a ruler

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 11: Flavor

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Immediately, this prompt made me think of describing potions.I want to have an easy way to generate more unique looks and experiences for potions.So, this table can generate a variation of experiences of a potion.

d10	Flavor	Smell	Color	Bottle shape
1	Bitter	Sharp smell of sulfur	Deep yellow	A globe with a stopper
2	Strawberry	Sickly sweet	Reddish pink	Tall and thin
3	Banana	Sweet and fruity	Bright yellow	Round at the bottom with a tall top
4	Salty	Sharp and biting	Light blue	Square column
5	Seaweed	Briny and earthy	Green-blueish	A cube
6	Garlicky	Like pine needles	Yellowy green	Pyramidal bottle
7	Cardamom	Citrusy and spicy	Dark green	Flat and triangular
8	Ginger	Zesty and spicy	Pale cyan	Large bottle
9	Coconut	Almondy	Pale yellow	Small octahedron
10	Cinnamon	Woody and sweet	Brownish red	Diamond

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 10: Origin

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

I really enjoyed reading Carcass Crawler 5, which has a chapter on creating Level 0 characters.As part of that, on p.14 there are background tables listing a profession, items carried, and a fitting weapon.I’d like to add on to those tables with one of my own.

d12	Profession	Item	Weapon
1	Urchin	Sack (small)	Blackjack (1d2)
2	Chrirugeon	Saw, Wine (2 pints)	Dagger (1d4)
3	Baker	Garlic, Cooking pots	Knife (1d4)
4	Mason	Hammer (small), Chisel	Hammer (1d4)
5	Fisherman	Fishing rod and tackle	Knife (1d4)
6	Farmer	Spade or shovel	Pitchfork (1d4)
7	Cobbler	Hammer (small), Iron spikes (12)	Dagger (1d4)
8	Wheelwright	Block and tackle	Hammer (1d4)
9	Roofer	Ladder (wooden, 10')	Handaxe (1d6)
10	Locksmith	Lock	Hammer (1d4)
11	Tanner	Oil (Flask), Hammer (small)	Club (1d4)
12	Carter	Sack (large)	Staff (1d4)

I haven’t played a funnel adventure in OSE yet, but I’m getting quite excited to try one!

Look forward to more RPGaDAY posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 09: Inspire

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

I was a little stuck on today’s prompt, “Inspire”.So, I used the little roll tables for additional inspiration.I got a 5, for “Why”; a 1, for “Envious”; and a 3 for “Genre”.Of those, “Genre” is the one that sparks something.So, today’s random table is going to be “genres” in a loose sense for inspiration.Typically, I’d say a genre is “fantasy” or “science fiction” or the like.What I’ll abuse it for today is seeds for adventurous locales.

d6	Call for adventure	Complication
1	A village is under threat of attack by monsters	Because it houses a sacred relic of the monsters
2	There are rumors of ancient treasure in a nearby ruin	Except it’s cursed
3	Nobody has ever returned from the bottom of the nearby canyons	Because there’s a portal to a different realm
4	The nearby forest houses a formidable witch	But visitors are not welcome
5	A band of criminals has fled to the nearby hills	The nearby hills house a large group of gnolls
6	There is a call for a nearby region to be explored	The local baron wants to annex the region

As before, these prompts can be read left to right in one roll, or you can mix two rolls for more interesting interactions.

Look forward to more RPGaDay posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 08: Explore

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Another day of my self-imposed random table per day challenge for RPGaDay2025!“Explore” is a bit of an easy prompt for this: any encounter table involves results of exploration.So, I tried to do another D-Devil table to have it generate curious results.

1d6	Feature	State	Complication
1	Cave	Inhabited by wildlife	Recovering from many wounds
2	Ruins	Crumbling and overgrown	Emanating an old evil
3	Bandit Camp	Filled with people gearing up for a fight	Very few resources available
4	Merchant	Set up for trade	Will only work in barter trade
5	Site of a battle	In bloodied disarray	Being picked clean by scavengers
6	Wizard’s Tower	Pristine and impenetrable	An angry wizard blames you for something

What would happen if a site of a battle was set up for trade yet an angry wizard blames you for something?What items could you trade?How would a cave be pristine and impenetrable, yet recovering from many wounds?

I hope this will help inspire out-of-the-box ideas!

Look forward to more RPGaDay posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 07: Journey

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Today’s entry for what has become RandomTableADay for me is on the topic “Journey”.

A few years back, I read the Welsh Piper’s post on Hex-based Campaign Design (Part 1).In it, The Welsh Piper speaks of efficient hex map design, referencing an old, lost-to-the-internet post by Greywulf, on a Microlite d20 site.This lost article is called “The Lazy Gamer’s Guide to World Building”, and I could find an old copy on Scribd.Greywulf argued to generate seven three-mile hexes, putting an adventure in each, and just expanding the next ring of hexes around wherever PCs move to.The Welsh Piper, in turn, expands on that idea by making 25-mile hexes with 5-mile subhexes, and the Part 1 post is all about generating that terrain.The idea being that one 25-mile atlas hex should be more than enough adventure to start with.

Welsh Piper’s method is to distribute terrain types yourself on hexes, using a set distribution.Half of the 18 whole hexes are a primary terrain, 6 are a secondary terrain, and three are either tertiary or wildcard.Their argument for referee distribution rather than random generation is that random generation will sometimes end up with quite unrealistic results.

Around that same time, I ran across the Hex Flower Cookbook—a procedural generation system with a “memory” of sorts.Golbin’s Henchman provides a quick overview, but quickly said: you make a hex map with outcomes to generate.While generating, you “travel” over the terrain, so that the previous result influences the next result.That way, it’s unlikely you’ll end up with a single mountain in the middle of plains, as you’ll travel through a hex of hills first in your terrain generation.

So, for today, I wanted to try out making a hex flower for Welsh Piper’s generation method.I chose to make one for the forest hex type, to see how it would work.I’ll have to try it out a few times to see what it produces.Below is the final result!If you use it, let me know what you think over on Bluesky.

Look forward to more RPGaDay posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 06: Motive

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

I’ve been on a kick now with making random tables for #RPGaDAY2025, so maybe I’ll just go nuts with it!This time, I want to try my hand at making a “D-Devil Table” as explained by Baron De Ropp.In this case, it’s not for a random encounter, but for faction motivations.

Number	Goal	Motivation	Complication
1	To rule the dungeon	A lust for power	Too weak to do it
2	Wipe out the other faction	Pure xenophobia	Can’t be seen doing it
3	Summon a powerful demon	Religious worship	Don’t know how yet
4	To loot the entire area	Pure greed	People are injured
5	Tend to the dungeon	Care for their home	Invaders ruin things
6	Prey on people who enter	Training for combat	Too many inexperienced members

Look forward to more RPGaDay posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 05: Ancient

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Similar to yesterday’s entry, today I wanted to make another random roll table.Again, I wanted to make a d30 table, using a different style this time.Here, the result on the 10s determine how to interpret the result on the 1s.

Since the theme for today is “Ancient”, this table is to generate features of an ancient civilization.Use it to determine a field of societal development and whether or not this is less, more, or the same type of development as current day society.It’s therefore always from the perspective of another society.

1s	Feature	10s	Development
1	Infrastructure	1-10	Less advanced
2	Magical understanding	11–20	Similar to now
3	Military	21–30	More advanced
4	Construction
5	Divine occurences
6	Interplanar travel
7	Settlement of land
8	Means of transportation
9	Social equality
0	Technology

I always enjoyed how in Lord of the Rings, there’s a theme of loss throughout.Wherever the hobbits (or the rest of the fellowship) travel, there’s old ruins.Those ruins are always grand in scale or import.Whether it’s the giant argonauts signifying an old, largely lost kingdom or something like Weathertop, each bit of the Lord of the Rings landscape is a callback to an older era.A table like this could help inspire such small little hints at older times.

Look forward to more RPGaDay posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 04: Message

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

Today’s topic is “message”.I have to admit, I was a little stumped to write something here!In the end, I figured to create a little random table of possible message delivery methods.I wanted to use my d30 again, so I made a table escalating dramatically in the higher numbers.That way, if you want more grounded suggestions, you can just roll a d10.If you want only out-there results, add 10.If you want to go hog-wild, add 20!

1–10	Normal	11–20	Wacky	21–30	Gonzo
1	Carved in a tree	11	Carved in a tavern table	21	Carved in a dead body
2	Stuck in a bottle	12	Stuck in a ming vase	22	Stuck in a Faberge egg
3	On the back of a map	13	On the back of a rug	23	On the back of the King’s royal portrait
4	Appearing in smoke	14	Appearing in the clouds	24	Appearing in the stars
5	Whispered from a nearby alleyway	15	Shouted from the rooftops	25	Declared in a booming voice from the sky
6	Seen in a dream	16	Seen in a drug haze	26	Seen in a prophetic vision
7	Heard through a rumor in a pub	17	Heard from a town crier	27	Brought by appointed messenger
8	Found in a scroll on a desk	18	Found in a book in the library	28	Found etched in a newly discovered ancient monument
9	Appears when a letter is held over flame	19	Appears when a letter is held in moonlight	29	Appears in wounds over the PC’s back
10	Sent through carrier pigeon	20	Sent through griffin postal worker	30	Sent through an angelic messenger

Look forward to more RPGaDay posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 03: Tavern

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

I’m a big fan of the generators by New Big Dragon Games Unlimited, such as their d30 Sandbox Companion or their d30 DM Companion.When I first saw their loaded d30 die tables, where the ones and tens could give results on different tables at the same time, I was blown away.It was so simple!Yet so rich!In fact, it made me specifically buy a d30, despite being able to still roll using a 1d6 and a 1d10 at the same time.Now, my first idea was to create a tavern generator.As it turns out, the d30 Sandbox Companion already has an excellent one on pp. 36–37.

Historical Reference

Now, it does conflate inns with taverns¹ but it’s still pretty awesome.What it did not have yet, despite being quite extensive, is an indication of inn size.So, taking a reference from this Ye Ol’ Bed & Breakfast on medievalists.net, I noted down common features.15th century English inns have:

A main hall;
A common area;
Stables;
A kitchen;
The innkeeper’s quarters;
Chambers.

There would be 4d4+1 individual chambers, with each having 1d3 beds available (i.e. 1-2: 1 bed; 3-4: 2 beds; 5-6: 3 beds). As far as the innkeeper goes, 85%–90% of innkeepers were male, so on a 1–2 on a d10, the innkeeper is female (usually having inherited the inn as a widow).

Sample Inn

Using the resources in the d30 Sandbox Companion and the added reference, that leads me to the following inn:

The Robber & Nomad Inn

Clientele: Criminals & thieves
Known for: Large collection of tankards
Main food: Stewed beef ribs
Physical Characteristics
- Newly built, 1-story timber structure
- Seven small rooms with feather matresses:
  - 2 singles;
  - 4 doubles;
  - 1 triple.
- Main hall
- Kitchen
- Inkeeper’s quarters
- Stables
- Common area

EDIT: As I wrote the last couple of posts, for the post on Day 4, I realized I wanted to make random tables per day.So, here’s my post-draft addition of a random table to use!In this case, a quick and dirty little table to determine inn size, using a d30.Look, they can’t all be winners.

Tens	Tavern Size	Ones	Services
0–10	Small	1	Only a tavern
11–20	Medium	2	Tavern and inn services
21–30	Large	3	Stables horses and offers beds
		4	Does not have a stable
		5	Only offers common hall beds
		6	Offers excellent food
		7	Offers care for horses
		8	Offers protected storage
		9	Offers messenger service
		10	Will hide people from the law

Look forward to more RPGaDay posts throughout the month!

As per Taverns of Yore, a tavern is a drinking establishment while an inn also provides lodging. ↩︎

RPGaDay 2025 02: Prompt

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

I’ve often said that I’m creatively challenged.That is to say, when I have a blank page in front of me, I have trouble starting.Some people have marvelous imaginations that seem to be able to create things out of thin air.Not so much me.However, when I was taking part in #Dungeon23, I had to learn creative methods.What I found is that I can work well with some prompts.When I have something to riff off of, and I do that regularly, I do have the ability to create new things.

A book that really helped me at that time was the Tome of Adventure Design.It’s filled with prompts (even in the margins!) which helped me get started.Mythmere Games have also recently published a succesor: the Tome of World Building.While I don’t have a lot of experience with that one yet, I’m looking forward to testing it out more.

An honorable mention goes out to Roll 4 Ruin.I haven’t worked with this yet, but I saw it posted by /u/Gammlernoob over on the OSR subreddit.I guess this calls for a post where I test it out to create a dungeon, doesn’t it?

EDIT: so, four days ahead in writing this, I realized I want to make a random table per day.So, here’s a post-writing addition of a random table!In this case, it’s a table I can use when I’m stuck for ideas.It’s a permission from myself to not take things too seriously: I"m just setting up a session for friends, not publishing my own game.So, it’s a table to push me to borrow things from existing media to kickstart my ideas.Roll 3d6 and mix and match from the columns to get a direction to borrow from.

d6	What	How	From
1	Mood	Copy directly	Movie
2	Genre	Put in other context	Book
3	Style	Mix with other element	TV Show
4	Plot Point	Make an homage to	Game
5	Twist	Invert original	Play
6	Aesthetic	Take one part of original	History

Look forward to more RPGaDay posts throughout the month!

RPGaDay 2025 01: Patron

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 11:00:00 +0200

For the first post of RPGaDAY2025, the prompt is “Patron”.Immediately, I thought of the (only) two Patreons that I support: 3d6DownTheLine and Worlds Beyond Number.

Worlds Beyond Number is a podcast that my spouse and I enjoy greatly.It’s a wonderful narrative-heavy podcast by Aabriya Iyengar, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Erika Ishii, and Lou Wilson.The main campaign to date is run by Brennan, set in a homebrew world.It’s a lovely mix of Studio Ghibli vibes, fey shenanigans, and hardcore politics and war.On the side, they have little mini campaigns every now and then, which tend to be hilarious.

3d6 Down the Line, by contrast, is an old-school RPG podcast.They have had two campaigns so far: Dolmenwood and Arden Vul.For the Patreon, they’re actually returning to Dolmenwood soon with an exclusive campaign I’m particularly looking forward to.They just wrapped up Arden Vul, so the next campaign will be a Mothership story.

I very much enjoy both of these podcasts, and given that I don’t like subscription models for things, it says something that I support these patreons. I highly recommend these for anybody looking to pick up a new podcast.

EDIT:Four days in, I realized I wanted to have random tables for each of the entries, so here’s an edit!In this case, a random list of patrons.Here again, you can roll a die and read down the line or role it three times and get curious combos.I’m always stuck trying to think of names for people, so I figure to make a random name generator.

First roll a d6 to find out how long the name is.

d6	Name Length
1–2	First part only
3–4	First and second Part
5–6	Three-part name

D6	First Part	Second Part	Third Part
1	Hull	Der	-Flax
2	Bowder	Ton	-Smythe
3	Graft	Son	-St. John
4	Holder	Field	-Clyde
5	Fields	Smith	-Ridge
6	Bramper	Idge	-Parson

Look forward to more RPGaDay posts throughout the month!

Session 5 Report Hole in the Oak

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 15:54:39 +0200

Previous session report can be found here. Next session report is here. First session report can be found here.

Overall

On Friday July 18^th, I ran the fifth session of my Hole in the Oak game for OSE via FoundryVTT.In this session, the PCs followed up on their fight with the fauns by looting them of their valuables.They figured out that the fauns had been killing and cooking whomever walked on by.Funnily enough, the party searched specifically in all the wrong places, and pretty much would have missed the humanoid cookbook clue.However, they’d pretty much figured it out, so I just gave that to them.

I rolled some random encounters during all of this, which created some fun diversions for the PCs.Particularly the appearance of a random portal was an interesting hook.The players recognized it as a portal, were tempted by the weirdness, but had to choose to abandon it in favor of following their plan.

In the last third of the session, the PCs had gone back to town.They sold of the loot and got XP for the faun’s treasure they’d brought back.Using that, they geared up again for another delve into the dungeon.They also got two hirelings: a porter and a torchbearer.In a move I found particularly cool, they chose to seek out a sage in town to help sift their rumors.For a price, and with a week’s work, the sage told them some history of the White League and Bozurah the Imperishable.They also heard that it was unlikely that there were gold statues and bronze golems in the dungeon.

What Went Well

Looking up stuff while players are shopping

The PCs first asked me about a sage to help them with their questions.I wrote those down as they were asking it, and indicated it would take in-game time.However, right after the PCs wanted to do a bit of shopping, so I gave them equipment lists, and listened in with half an ear while they were shopping.In the meantime, I browsed through the module to check for answers they’d needed.

Improvising answers

Those answers, fortunately, tied together quite well—a sign of a well-written module, I’d say.The White League had a nice hook to a serpent cult, which is evocative and encouraged them to delve back in.Bozurah the Imperishable was introduced to the PCs via a random encounter illusion, so they wanted to know more.The background given in the module is that Bozurah is a historical figure of no import.That tied well with the rumour about there being a bronze golem in the dungeon: I could get the sage to dismiss that false rumour by virtue of Bozurah being a nobody.

Lessons Learned

Random Encounters

I neglected to roll 1d6 for the random encounter table this time.I just overlooked it, I guess.Instead, I rolled the 1d20 every turn and generated the wild stuff.While that did create a lot of events in a short time, it made it all feel a little too random.Next time, I’ll have to remember to only do that on a 1d6 chance.

Session 4 Report Hole in the Oak

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sun, 18 May 2025 11:10:22 +0200

Previous session report can be found here. Next session report is here. First session report can be found here.

Overall

On Friday May 9^th, I ran the fourth session of my Hole in the Oak game for OSE via FoundryVTT.In this session, the PCs finished buying equipment at the town, and retuThis time, the PCs continued their encounter with the suspicious fauns.They had a quick chat with them, realized things were wrong, and quickly withdrew.After that regroup, with one hireling unconscious after being drugged by the fauns, they strategized.After heading back they gave the fauns drugged cookies in revenge.They ended the session by going in and finishing the job with their weapons.

What Went Well

Running combat

I felt a lot more comfortable running combat this time around.I used the reference booklet on my secondary monitor to keep the order of combat up to help.The players also seemed more comfortable in the order of operations.Overall, the encounter was actually quite easy to run, despite there being 11 combatants.Not only was it easy, it was also quite fast!I liked how dynamic the combat ended up being, since there weren’t too many rules to juggle.

Lessons Learned

Division of Experience

I remembered that retainers only receive a half share of treasure.So, when I needed to distribute 100XP to the characters, I could explain the rules stated it had to be an equal distribution.When the time came to actually calculate it, though, I floundered.I had three players and two retainers, so it shouldn’t have been too tricky.What would work is to divide the whole number by 4 (three whole shares and two halves).100/4=25, which meant I had to divide 25/2=12 still to get the retainer XP.

I realized that this is already a little awkward (dividing twice) but would get worse if they had an odd number of retainers.I’m not going to mentally divide by 4.5.Instead, I ended up grabbing an Excel file, and working it out there.This, ideally, is something I’d like to automate using FoundryVTT.Not only would dividing the XP be easier if it’s automated, now we also have to keep track of the fact that the PCs don’t have this yet until they’ve returned to town.I’m not sure yet how to do that one other than making a note.

Printing out a tracking sheet in advance

Last time, I had used the OSE Dungeon Time Tracker to keep track of dungeon turns.I wasn’t that prepared this time, and it turns out my printer was out of toner.So, I had to improv a bit using just a sheet of paper.That worked all right, but I noticed I did miss out on having some predefined squares, which had me count them to keep track of what turn we were on.It was only a small thing, but a small thing I had to do frequently as we moved, which added up the tiny delays.

Session 3 Report Hole in the Oak

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 16:16:33 +0100

Previous session report can be found here. Next session report is here. First session report can be found here.

Overall

On Friday, I ran the third session of my Hole in the Oak game for OSE via FoundryVTT.In this session, the PCs finished buying equipment at the town, and returned back to the dungeon.They cautiously explored a couple of rooms ahead, correctly sensing danger at each crossroads.Finally, they chose to go down an early side-passage they’d skipped over, ending as they attracted the attention of some suspicious fauns.

What Went Well

New Desktop Setup

This was the first session I ran for this group using my new 34" ultrawide monitor, and it worked perfectly.I could easily fit both FoundryVTT as well as the Discord webcams on the same screen, and use my secondary monitor in portrait mode for reference.

Signalling Danger

In the previous session, the PCs had fled from a serious of ghouls with their lives intact.This time, they went exploring in the other direction with some trepidation.They had three options avaiable:

A curious side-passage with hoof and bootprints leading in but only hoofprints back out; and
A large cave opening up into darkness; and
A stone passage leading to an archway with a skeleton lying in it.

For each I could hint at some danger.The hoof- and bootprints already signalled that people were brought in but not out.The PCs were immediately suspicious of the archway because of the skeleton.In trying to investigate the skeleton, they made a bunch of noise, so I had the dangerous bats in the cave start skittering about.The PCs chose to withdraw, rest, and then picked their best option.Following the discussion, I could see they were weighing up possible risks to each other, and I was happy to see I’d communicated those well enough.

Improvising Villager Knowledge

When the PCs were back at the town, they wanted to ask around to see if anybody knew anything about the dungeon area.I’d decided that it was a small village, and that the PCs were just about the only adventurers they knew of other than retainers passing through.I didn’t want to slam the door in the PCs’ faces, though.I ended up going to the rumor table and using that as villager knowledge.After all, if these are the rumors, it must be the villagers spreading them, right?

Lessons Learned

Downtime Activities

While in town, the bard decided he wanted to perform at the inn for some cash.This caught me off guard a little, simply because I hadn’t thought of it yet.I decided to just wing it, and say we could roll a d4 or d6 and that’s how much money he’d make.Initially, I said that number in GP, but the bard felt that seemed a little off, so we just settled on SP after I compared some prices of basic services.It felt like something I should have figured out in advance, though.

Afterwards, I went looking up what some common wisdom is on this.In On Downtime and Demesnes, I read:

Professional Income Characters can choose to practice a craft or a profession in a city.This negates their living expenses and earns them an appropriate salary in gold pieces per month.A bard or prostitute could make a lot of money or maybe none, whereas a scribe would earn less but have more assurance of getting paid a decent rate.

It’s not very specific, though it suggests to use downtime as a monthly activity.I also like the idea of variable money depending on the type of work done, but there’d still have to be some idea for a system.Judging by the idea that a bard would make a less consistent income than a scribe, I’d imagine that’d be expressed in different die types.Perhaps something like a bard earning a flat d12 but a scribe earning 4+1d4GP?

A quick browse on Reddit showed that other referees also wing it with some homebrew.Another posts focuses more on what the PCs can do in downtime.This makes sense to me, because any adventurer will soon find their income from adventuring vastly outstripping what they can make in standard jobs.Most advice I ended up finding was therefore focused on how to get PCs to spend money: strongholds, guilds, carousing, philanthropy, and so on.

I did see a nice recommendation in Downtime in Zyan.Most people recommended Downtime and Demesnes but Downtime in Zyan had an equal number of fans in the comments.That might be a fun pickup somewhere down the road.

Session Report: The Haunting of Ypsilon-14

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:50:49 +0100

Yesterday, Feb 17^th, I ran a one-shot session of The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 for Mothership.I had six players in the session and, as usual, ran it over FoundryVTT.While FoundryVTT doesn’t have an official module or system set for Mothership, fortunately somebody put together MoSh - Unofficial Mothership—which works just as well.

Overall

Preparation

To prepare for the session, I referenced a write-up by Jason Alexander on how he preps modules.I used his adjusted hook for the session—I know my PCs, and if I said “you’re here to drop off cargo”, the PCs would drop off the cargo and say: “missing people? That sounds like a you problem.”Fortunately, this group had a great group dynamic: one of them was an android owned by The Company¹,

What really helped me out was Jason’s suggestion of using an adversary roster for all the characters.Basically, the idea is to make little lists of who’s where, so you have a vibrant scene.I know I would have felt rattled if I had to make it up on the spot, so having a simple little sticky note on my monitor was a great help.

FoundryVTT

My Hole in the Oak game has a pre-made module that I use for FoundryVTT.This time, however, there was no FoundryVTT support built-in, so I had to define things myself.It was remarkably easy to add the three sound files that come with the module.All I had to do was to define a playlist (I called it “Cassettes”), and upload the three files.A playlist in FoundryVTT has three possible settings: continuous play, shuffle, and soundboard.As I expected, the “soundboard” function meant I could play a single file to all players.

A specific mechanic in the module made me realize I needed a FoundryVTT solution to handle it.According to the Warden Notes, the monster picks off a crewmember of Ypsilon-14 every ten minutes.The suggested method is to roll a d10 for the list of characters to see which one gets eaten by the monster, which seemed okay at first glance.In practice, it would mean I had to roll a d10 in FoundrVTT, and double-check the list of characters.On top of that, I’d have to keep track of who’s already dead, and reroll if that character is picked.Fortunately, FoundryVTT has a rollable table feature, with the option to turn off replacement of entries.Now, with a simple table, I could keep my mind on the game and update the character list with just a click of a button.

What Went Well

Splitting attention

As I was running the module, there were a few moments where the PCs chose to split up.This was, of course, great for a horror game: the monster had some good opportunities to kill crewmembers off-screen but also ambush some PCs at times.We all were a little liberal with who could hear what, so that there were good moments of people running from one room to the other so that their PCs could know what was up.I took the opportunity here to have pauses with little cliffhangers.One PCs was tackled down by Dr Giovanni, who was ready to slice open their vaccsuit to drip yellow goo on them.Quick cut to characters on the other side of the station, in the mess hall, trying to get Ashraf to go to gather up with the rest of the crew.I felt it both created a little tension for the characters in the fight, as well as giving me a little time to figure out exactly what could happen next.

Running combat

Combat is surprisingly easy in Mothership.Attacking is as simple as rolling under your combat skill.Armor classes effectively work as damage reduction (though, confusingly, damage reduction itself is also a thing).It did keep combat going quite swiftly.Even though we were playing in FoundryVTT, we did not use any grid maps, which I think really helped.Thinking just loosely in terms of “adjacent” versus “close” meant we could just act quickly.

A wonderful moment happened when one of the crew members was discovered to be infected by the Yellow Goo.The PCs wanted everybody to move away from him, which made the crew member nervous and agitated.He lunged for a laser cutter in the work cubbies, and two PCs immediately declared “I shoot him!”.Because combat does not work in turns nor does it have initiative scores, everything just happens at the same time.Cue absolute excessive violence.The moment worked perfectly, and was very much in genre as well.

Lessons Learned

Introduce characters more quickly

Based on my prep, I had the characters spread out throughout the station.My assumption was that the PCs would get to know them in small chunks as they explored.However, because I’d set up the hook as the PCs needing to get the sample from Dr Giovanni, and they just immediately hacked the door to go in, there wasn’t really any need for them to go around and explore.Consequently, they’d only really half-met a few NPCs, and there wasn’t too much interaction yet.The next time around, it makes more sense to do a scene like the communal meal scene at the start of Alien: a quick introduction of people’s character before they split up to do their jobs.

Have the monster be aggressive

Because I wanted the PCs to meet all characters, I waited with introducing the monster.I chose to have the monster be in Dr Giovanni’s ship and it would sneak out when they entered it.However, that means there wasn’t much of a ramp up of missing characters.Next time around, I should keep to the 10-minute timeline of monster attacks right from the start.Or, at least, after the proposed communal meal scene.

Find a reason for the characters to go deep into the facility

Because I set the hook as needing to find a sample of the Yellow Goo, the PCs could be done in three rooms.From Docking Bay 2 to the Workspace, hack into Docking Bay 1 to get the sample, then back to Docking Bay 2 and leave.Okay, the module states that if the PCs leave without dealing with the monster, it follows them onto their sihp.That might be relevant if this was part of a longer campaign, because then you could have a cool adventure flushing the monster out of the ship.However, this is billed as a one-shot: I didn’t have a ship worked out for them!Just saying everybody died as an epilogue is also not satisfactory.Fortunately, my PCs did go ahead and try to solve the mystery and save the people onboard.Next time, however, I’d include Mike in the hook somehow—maybe they have to get the sample from him, or take him into custody, or have him report back.That way, the players are incentivized to go into the mines, which both isolates them a little more and gives them the opportunity to learn about the monster.

Scale consequences for failed rolls

Specifically, in this session I think I was too easy on the laser cutter.A few characters had laser cutters: a weapon that does 1d100 damage (versus 1d10 on your average gun).The few times it was used, I described things being damaged but when I think about it, I should have scaled the consequences to the damage rolled.In retrospect, I should have said that if the damage is over 50, they would have breached the hull.To me, that models what the laser cutter would be better: an incredible weapon but high-risk/high-reward.

Use saves a lot more

The core mechanic of this game is geared around the stress/panic system.PCs are supposed to build up stress during play, which will cause them to panic more frequently and more extremely.In this session, I forgot to call for saves a lot and just called for stress rolls when terrible things happened.That meant that the PCs stress levels didn’t go up too much, and we didn’t see the panic system come into play until about the end.If I’d have called for more saves and used (dis)advantage more, there would have been more interaction with that system.Next time around, I’ll have to keep a little reminder for myself on a sticky note, to help call for more saves more frequently.

Real late-stage capitalist dystopia style. “What company?”—“THE Company”. ↩︎

Session 2 Report: Hole in the Oak

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 08:27:49 +0100

Previous session report can be found here. Next session report is here.

Overall

Yesterday, I ran the second session of my Hole in the Oak game via FoundryVTT.It was a three-hour session, and once again I’m surprised by how much more we can get done using OSE compared to running games in, say, PF2e.I’ve gotten more used to hosting the game on FoundryVTT as well.On top of that, the PCs were also on fire this session!It was wonderfully enjoyable all around.

What Went Well

Using FoundryVTT

This time, I’d checked the journal notes on FoundryVTT to see how it would work.While they did have all the relevant information, I found the PDF to be more easy to reference.So, I just stuck with the PDF on my second screen, and that worked just fine.

Running combat

This was also the first time I ran combat, and the mechanics in Foundry worked quite easily once I figured out I had to assign “teams” to the combatants.I was quite happy that I remembered a lesson that Hexed Press discussed in his corrections video.He pointed out that a lot of people will run combat in phases per team¹ but the actual OSE rules have you run a turn first for one team and then the next.I had a quick glance at my rules reference next to me and made sure to follow that procedure.

Skills versus description

The PCs were also rocking it this session!I described a room where an illusory treasure is meant to tempt the players to cross a dangerous pit, which certainly tempted them.At first they figured to approach it like mountain climbers and hammer pins and ropes to the wall to ensure a safe passage.Then, just before they would do it, one PC had a great idea: pick up a rock and throw it at the treasure!It was so cool to describe the rock just falling into the treasure as though it hit a pond—image of the treasure wavering before settling down.

Similarly, a bit later there was a section of hallway with a set of waterlogged corpses.Of course, these were only really ghouls laying in wait pretending to be watery cadavers.Instead of moving forward, however, the players were very suspicious and started examining the corpses.They asked loads of questions about footprints, what direction the corpses were lying, and what their wounds were.Fully suspicious, they poked the lead corpse with a polearm, and when it reared up in pain, they threw a burning oil flask to the corner and ran!Awesome stuff!

It really drove home to me that using skills on the character sheet is a risky endeavor.Just a 1-in-6 to spot a trap? Yikes!However, a PC describing a sensible course of action has a 100% chance of success.It seems to suggest that the skills on the character sheet are a “when all else fails” type of solution.

Lessons Learned

Infravision

A thing I want to pay attention to next session is how to describe infravision.OSE describes infravision as enabling characters to “see heat tones”.Almost all the PCs have infravision, so they did not light any torches for a few turns (forcing their retainer to follow them in the dark!).²I forgot the description of infravision quickly enough and without thought started treating it like perfect nightvision, describing things they could see.

When I caught myself, I just started verbalizing: “Hmm, how would you see that in heat tones? Let me think…” when they asked about descriptions of things.That prompted them to light torches to start looking at things more.For next time, I should probably put a sticky note on the monitor to remind myself of that procedure.

Loyalty rating

At the very start of the previous session, one of the retainers snuffed it falling down the hole into the dungeon.In this session, on returning to town, the PCs decided to sell off what they recovered of his gear and donate half of it to his widow and children.I thought that the other retainers seeing that would probably appreciate the gesture, and they should earn a little loyalty bonus.

And then I realized I didn’t really know what their loyalty bonus was!I did a bit of quick searching, but I couldn’t find an answer on the spot in a reasonable amount of time.³Turns out that I shouldn’t have just skipped over the “Charisma Modifiers” table in my search, as all I needed was right there!

Town services

When the PCs made it back to town, they wanted to do exactly what you’d expect: sell off some old gear, get a room at an inn to heal, and prep for the next delve.While it was exactly what you’d expect, I hadn’t given it any thought, actually.I had a quick peek in the OSE manual but couldn’t find any helpful table, so I just made some stuff up.Selling items? Sure, at 50%!A room for the day? Umm, 1gp?Was there a mage in the village who could decipher scrolls? Nah! It’s a tiny village!

I just rolled with it, and it was fine.Afterwards, though, I delved through my copies of Carcass Crawler, and found that Carcass Crawler #2 had a little section on town services.It was pretty much what I just defaulted to, so that felt pretty validating.I hadn’t gone as far as specifying what food the inn served, as in the zine, but that also didn’t seem that pertinent at the time.

Listen checks

There’s a passage in the OSE rules that is a little confusing to me.The procedure notes specifically:

One chance: This attempt may only be made one time at any door by a character.

Strictly speaking, this would read as a character only ever being able to listen at doors once.However, it could mean that the intention is that only one character can listen at a specific door.The B/X rulebook, however, notes:

For each character listening, the DM should roll 1d6. […] Each character may only try once per door.

So, the original text is much clearer: everybody can listen at any door just once.On the one hand, I dislike the idea of an entire party all listening at a door for ten minutes (what a silly sight that would be!).On the other hand, I also cannot find a reasonable justification that a party should not be able to do exactly that.So, I guess I’ll continue to rule that everybody can listen at the door together.

That is to say: first everybody moves, then everybody shoots, etc. This contrasts to first one team does all its actions, then the next team. ↩︎
In retrospect, I should have that caused a loyalty penalty. Who would be happy following an employer in absolute dangerous darkness for half an hour? ↩︎
I keep a little one-minute sandtimer on my desk—if I can’t find a rule or answer in that time, I’ll just make something up. ↩︎

I restarted the Write Your First Adventure course

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 15:41:53 +0100

Back in August of 2024, I signed up for the Write Your First Adventure course from the Storytelling Collective.It’s intended to be a one-month course that you follow to write and publish your first one-shot module.I . . . did not finish that in one month.I do, however, want to get back to it and complete that course, and so I’ve restarted it.

What stopped me

The problem was the exact one I’d expected: I did not dedicate the time for it to complete it in one month.I have a demanding job, and some days I come home quite low-energy.Usually, my energy peaks in the late morning to early afternoon in any case, and in the evenings I’m already low energy.With evenings already being low-energy moments, work sometimes taking a lot out of me, and evenings being my only free time during the week, it’s hard to be productive.

Skip a day, and that’s fine.Soon you’ll find yourself skipping two, three, and a week.Before you know it, it’s been quite a while.I wanted to follow along with the design of WYFA, and do it within the one-month timeframe.You know what, though? That’s just not realistic for me.So the next logical thing is to just do it my own way.

Adjusting to OSR

What is tricky, though, is that the course does seem to be geared towards storytelling (unsurprising, since it’s from the Storytelling Collective!).While the course is absolutely built to have you write your own thing, there’s some underlying assumptions still.For example, the section on mindmapping and outlining suggests that there is a sequence to the adventure that you’ll write.However, all of the OSR products that I’ve been experiencing so far are designed more like a playground.There’s no predefined story for players to work their way through, but rather there’s a playground full of toys for them to interact with.

Nevertheless, I just take what I can use and leave behind what I don’t need.For example, to resolve the mindmapping/outlining section, I did not create something mapped to storybeats but rather the interconnection of locations.For the antagonist, I did not bother to create a single Big Bad Evil Guy but rather used the advice from the course to create a few factions with relationships to each other.

Overall, I would still suggest WYFA as a good framework to start with, even with adjustments being needed for an OSR playstyle.There’s plenty of advice on blogs out there to help create OSR experiences, so a little bit of mixing and matching of advice works wonders.When I’m further down the line, I’ll post some more thoughts on it.

Session 1 Report: Hole in the Oak

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 09:03:11 +0100

The next session report is here.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned I would be running Hole in the Oak for the first time that Friday.Unfortunately, due to some scheduling issues, we’ve had to reschudle.Fortunately, yesterday, the session worked out and I ran Hole in the Oak for three friends.

This was the third time I’ve run an OSE thing on Foundry, and the second start of a real adventure.In this post, I want to describe how I’ve prepped for this session, what I’ve learned, and what was really fun to do.I specifically want to focus on two of the major aspects, using FoundryVTT as my virtual tabletop and working with the Hole in the Oak PDF file.

FoundryVTT

I’d bought the OSE: Advanced Fantasy Module along with the OSE: Hole in the Oak Module, which integrated perfectly in FoundryVTT.The Advanced Fantasy Module gave me all the rules to display to players, and ease drag-and-drop abilities and autorolling.The Hole in the Oak Module came with a preconfigured map, some light sources, and monster tokens listed.Character creation went fairly easily, with an automated 3d6 down-the-line roll that filled out most statistics for the players.Getting equipment was a drag-and-drop affair as well, though they players had to manually adjust their gold.

While playing, I thought there were no map notes, so I was referencing the PDF on the side constantly, which was annoying.However, as it turns out, there are map notes but I had to turn those on with a button on the left side of my map.Similarly, I’d made the players some retainers beforehand, but had to find a little checkbox in a settings page on their character sheet to set them up correctly.The same went for spellcasters, which also needed a little checkmark.In short: I’d recommend browsing through all settings pages just to check.

Hole in the Oak PDF

As I wrote above, I had the PDF file open on my monitor on the side in portrait mode, because I didn’t realize that there were actually map notes.As tricky as it was cross-referencing back and forth, the PDF itself as actually really helpfully laid out.There’s usually only two rooms per page, and each spread of pages has a little mini-map to help you reference things.Important things to note are bolded with more detailed information right after, so I got into a groove of describing a room through the bolded text and answering the players’ questions with the other text.

The only thing that was a little tricky every now and then was when the players went through the map via the left tunnels, because they would ask me what they heard and smelled down corridors and I’d had to flip forward through the PDF a little.From the way it’s set up, I would imagine that would have been easier with a physical book, but even now it wasn’t that tricky.

What Went Well

I really enjoyed how easy it was to adjudicate actions.Because there were so few rules or complex systems, it did just come down to what made sense at the virtual table.The players were also really cool about trying the system: their character stats weren’t super great but they were all in on just trying it.When two of the players only rolled 1HP for starting health, we did just reroll everybody for a little survivability.

I was super happy that I made some retainers for them, because in the very first room one of them failed a roll and died from falling already!It was quite a signal that OSE can be quite dangerous at early levels but it didn’t cost the players one of their characters, so that was good.

The players were also really good about exploring and asking questions.That really helped me get into a question-response groove, and it felt like we were collaborating on creating an adventure together.I really enjoyed a moment where one of the characters discovered a room which tiny people in jars, and the players started speculating about what could have happened.Of course, that’s when one of the players accidentally got themselves shrunk down to 6" size, which was hilarious.

What I Can Do Better

Now that I know there are journal notes on the map, I will definitely be using those next time.Flicking back and forth to the PDF did frazzle me a little bit, though it wasn’t too bad.

I also was a little hesitant about how to use the retainers.In this session, the players were controlling their movement but they were engaging them in conversation as though they were relevant NPCs rather than, well, cannon fodder.

As we were trying to get going, I was a little off-balance in trying to get everything working.Though I had originally planned to have the players map, I realized I didn´t have DungeonDraw installed.When I looked at the map, and the starting tunnels, I also wasn´t too sure how to start describing them.So, I defaulted to just using the map set up in the module instead.I’d like to practice describing rooms more, though, to get player mapping going.

I'm Running Hole in the Oak for the First Time on Friday

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 16:01:48 +0100

EDIT: Unfortunately, due to scheduling issues, we didn’t end up running this on the 10^th. Fortunately, we could reschedule to the 17^th!

~~Next Friday~~, I’ll be running Hole in the Oak over FoundryVTT.I’ve tested out running OSE before, using Tomb of the Serpent Kings but that was only a short test of the system.I’ve also used FoundryVTT extensively in hosting Abomination Vaults for a group, which also includes two of the players who will be joining Hole in the Oak.So, this will be a first real test of running an OSR adventure!

Aside from reading through the Principia Apocrypha and A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, I’ve also been scrounging through blogs to prepare.I liked Yochai Gal’s post over on New School Revolution for laying out some core principles really simply.Reading these things really hit home to me.A lot of what I’ve run over the past years has been pretty darned crunchy.Particularly running Pathfinder 2nd Edition has been really rough, because it’s so mechanically bogged down.Everything I read about the OSR, however, comes down to “play to find out”.Decide things randomly and move on.Don’t know how to work things out? Good news: that’s the players’ job.My big job as referee will be to be clear, complete, and descriptive for my players.That feels like such a weight off my shoulders, really.

To prepare, I read through the adventure cover to cover, so I know what’s going on.I recognised the advice on how to run OSR games in the way the adventure is structured.There’s no plot written out in the adventure.There’s no goal to achieve here, nor a story to uncover.There’s just people who live in a hole under the oak, and they want things in their daily life.I recognise “Develop situations, not plots” here from Yochai Gal’s post.

There’s some incredibly lethal traps in the adventure (“Death should be on the table”), but I also see clear hints in the room about those traps (“Telegraph danger”).For example, a swinging blade trap is hinted at because there’s a corpse with a big slash in its side right where the trap is.I love that there’s entries for rooms like “There’s a 2-in-6 chance of one of the gnomes fishing here” (“Randomness is a beautiful thing”).It’s clear in all the writing that the dungeon will do fine without the players (“The PCs are not invited”), so it feels alive on its own.

Just reading this module already shows a lot about OSR sensibilities.I hope that running it will help me practice some of these basic tenets together with my players!

I remade the HeroQuest maps in Dungeondraft

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 17:39:51 +0100

About three years ago, I started learning how to use Dungeondraft.Back then, as an exercise, I started converting quests from the Main Game Quest book into a Dungeondraft map.These maps turned out to be popular over on Reddit.I never actually finished those up, though.The last post I made was the twelfth map, and since then I’d gotten some messages asking for the last two maps.Sadly, as part of the 2023 Reddit API kerfuffle, I ended up leaving Reddit, and not responding to those.

It always felt as a loose thread, and so I’ve gotten back to them to finish the maps up and post them here.

I made all these maps with assets from Crosshead Studios and Krager’s Shadow and Light Pack.These versions are small and watermarked, but larger versions are available here.If you’d like some adjustments to these maps (gridless, day/night version, etc), shoot me a message and I’ll see what I can do for you.

The Trial Test

Map 1: The Cellars of Verag

The Rescue of Sir Ragnar

Map 2: The Rescue of Sir Ragnar

Lair of the Orc Warlord

Map 3: The Lair of the Orc Warlord

Prince Magnus’ Gold

Map 4: Prince Magnus’ Gold

Melar’s Maze

Map 5: Melar’s Maze

Legacy of the Orc Warlord

Map 6: Legacy of the Orc Warlord

The Lost Wizard

Map 7: The Lost Wizard

The Fire Mage

Map 8: The Fire Mage

Race Against Time

Map 9: Race Against Time

Castle of Mystery

Map 10: Castle of Mystery

Bastion of Chaos

Map 11: Bastion of Chaos

Barak Tor—Barrow of the Witch Lord

Map 12: Barak Tor—Barrow of the Witch Lord

Quest for the Spirit Blade

Map 13: Quest for the Spirit Blade

Quest 14: Return to Barak Tor

Map 14: Return to Barak Tor

I want to write about discovering the OSR

paulo@osrchivist.com (The OSRchivist) — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:00:45 +0100

There’s so many blogs out there with sage advice, amazing designs, and people’s homebrewed games.I, however, am late to the party.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been gaming for about thirty years now—since the tail end of AD&D 2nd edition.My early roleplaying experiences were PC-based: Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, Wasteland, and so on.For tabletop, D&D 3rd edition was my first experience. Then came 3.5, Pathfinder, Worlds of Darkness, Burning Wheel, and Pathfinder 2nd edition.And somewhere between I stumble on this thing called “OSR”.

For a lot of creators out there, there’s a nostalgia for old experiences.There’s discussions of Google+ threads.Stories of home tables running for 10+ years.Old notebooks and binders being recovered from attics and basements.For me, I’m coming into this from the outside in: trying to figure out what this appealing playspace is.

So, in that ocean of advice blogs, expert GM tips, and homebrewed rules, I want to share the story of trying to figure it all out.As I test out systems and rules, as I try to make maps and write adventures, as I try to run OSR-style games for people, I will be posting about it here.Hopefully, it’ll help out others in discovering the OSR.