RPGaDay 2025 18: Sign

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.

RPGaDay 2025 17: Renew

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!

Session 6 Report Hole in the Oak

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).

RPGaDay 2025 16: Overcome

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!

RPGaDay 2025 15: Deceive

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.

RPGaDay 2025 14: Mystery

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.

RPGaDay 2025 13: Darkness

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.

RPGaDay 2025 12: Path

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.

RPGaDay 2025 11: Flavor

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.