𝔗ℜ𝔄ℑ𝔓𝔖𝔈

traipse.hexarcana.comDarkmantlesChthonic squid monsters floating soundlessly through the Inverted Palace . Conical indigo bodies ringed with crimson eyes; dense membrane we...

22 July

A blog post brave enough to answer the question on everyone's lips: "what if the classic D&D ceiling monster (that's not the cloaker, lurker, or piercer) was actually a psychedelic nightmare squid that imprints its eggs in your subconscious?" traipse.hexarcana.com/2026/07/dark...

22 July

I haven’t checked but has anyone done a comparative study of the Gamma World dice flowcharts & the CCRU Numogram

20 July

Transfixed by Frederic Coché's Hortus Sanitatis

Jason Song Quinn (Comms Open)

16 July

Angine de Poitrine makes me suspect I’m going normie, because historically I’d be all over a trendy math rock duo in kooky costumes but something about them... like I’m sure I can find enjoyment in their music if I really try but I put it on and immediately feel this visceral nausea-like repulsion

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@hulkhoquinn.bsky.social

5 July

A series of illustrations based on the prompts I got here.

Jason Song Quinn (Comms Open)@hulkhoquinn.bsky.social

Feel like drawing a knight, anyone got a theme I can use as inspiration?

traipse.hexarcana.comFriendship Simulator: a Procedure for Friends and ContactsThe same way equipment and gear help you get things done in the dungeon, friends and contacts help you get things done in the city. What thi...

1 July

Blogged about getting your players to make imaginary friends traipse.hexarcana.com/2026/06/frie...

26 June

Here's how you make a pun-based magic item cool: after you get an idea and give it mechanics, change the name. The Petard of Hoisting (everything in the blast radius is thrown 30' into the air) is hard to care about. But call it an Earth Reviler and suddenly it's awesome

26 June

"But then it won't be a play on words!" Good

26 June

Underrated dungeon inhabitant: big guy that follows you around

Evlyn Moreau@evlynmoreau.bsky.social

Solo session of Orbital Megastructure. This big guy followed me from a long distance, was unerving, luckily I was able to use my masking hack again to avoid being tracked.

25 June

Session number whatever of the party testing a key on every single lock they find, not realizing it opens a door the thief picked months ago

23 June

People who talk about Todd Hayne's SAFE (1995) are correct about the chilling plot and oppressive atmosphere, but no one mentions how it has one of the most unsettling minor characters ever put to film

@foreignplanets.bsky.social

11 June

A friend runs an Index Card RPG campaign at the game shop he works at. Asked me what he should do about a player who came in one day wanting to use a 30-page homebrew class. My advice: "if he can get it to fit on an index card, he can use it."

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Beneath Foreign Planets

31 May

A miserable #dungeon of savage pulp fair and oozing body-horror. 28 keyed areas over 5 pages, including the map, magic items and monsters. It's also #free. foreignplanets.blogspot.com/2026/05/pity...

foreignplanets.blogspot.comPITY THE CAVEMEN - an OD&D Horror DungeonA miserable dungeon of pulp savagery and slimesome body-horror.

traipse.hexarcana.comThe Inverted PalaceThis is what I sent my players as a little backstory for the big dungeon at the center of our campaign: The Inverted Palace On clear days, ...

21 May

Setting lore post 🏰📜🕯️ traipse.hexarcana.com/2026/05/the-...

13 May

As a kid I always waited until the bathtub completely drained before I got out so I could pretend, as the water lowered around me, that I was emerging as a synthetic organism from some sort of birthing vat

traipse.hexarcana.com1d6 Bounty HuntersSix villains who hunt wanted PCs or whoever the PCs are hunting. Dead or alive, always. 1. Lolelia Rakva Her skin is a beautiful pastel bl...

17 Apr

When PCs get a bounty on their heads, you need cool+colorful characters to hunt them down. Here are six: traipse.hexarcana.com/2026/04/1d6-...

16 Apr

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan deserved the kind of career King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard has

3 Apr

Melville once wrote of Moby-Dick: “it is of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships’ cables & hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it.” I hope one day something I write can be described the same way

2 Apr

I actually really like alignment (L-N-C of course, I don't care for G and E) but every OSR game plays like it doesn't exist. I endeavor to find a way to make it more relevant in my games and yet every attempt has left me wanting. This is my curse.

traipse.hexarcana.comWork, Shortcuts, and ShortcomingsMy marble visage wrinkles with an Ozymandian sneer when I read the countless posts advocating the disposal of this rule or that procedure be...

1 Apr

The conversation about what is lost when shortcuts and conveniences are used in TTRPG writing can be extended to OSR mechanics mechanics meant to sand off "rote" aspects of old games. Overloaded encounter dice are the bullet points of game mechanics. traipse.hexarcana.com/2026/03/work...

1 Apr

Leaving the typo in so you know it's serious

27 Mar

Illustrations like these are important for kids because they feed the part of the mind that craves the grotesque. You learned the pages you never turn to, save for when compelled by morbid curiosity... better to be occasionally distressed by a picture in a kids book than anesthetized by cocomelon

Keeping it Spooky 🎃@keepingitgeekly.bsky.social

Picture this: Carcosa but the visual inspiration is old school Tokusatsu

You arrive at a village ruled by『the Unapproachable Radiance』 and see this. What do you do

The Spawn of Shub-Niggurath gurgles menacingly as it approaches

The only remotely good Harry Potter-adjacent thing is Wizard People Dear Reader and that's only because of the amount of times Brad Neely gets to say "lo." Period end of story.

18 Mar

Forget it, Fafhrd. It's Lankhmar.

traipse.hexarcana.comMIGHT DICE: New House Rule for FightersEveryone has a fix for the Fighter. Every OSR game. Every blogger. I have . You have. It's a veritable right of passage. I have tried quite ...

18 Mar

Does the world have room for yet another OSR fighter fix? Yes. Specifically this one: traipse.hexarcana.com/2026/03/migh...

16 Mar

David J Prokopetz@prokopetz.bsky.social

(2/2) It does, however, bother me immensely when EXACTLY ONE house in the town has a toilet. What the fuck.

12 Mar

Working on a doc for my players about unlockable classes. One of the classes is unlocked by discovering it exists.

11 Mar

A common thing in JRPGs and other video games you don't see so much in fantasy TTRPGs is when monsters are a relatively recent phenomenon in the setting. It's either implied or outright stated that everything was fine and placid until the BBEG appeared, and now there are monsters everywhere

Rise Up (From the Grave) Comus

11 Mar

I feel like conceiving of monsters this way solves a lot of worldbuilding issues people run into

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@riseupcomus.bsky.social

10 Mar

Replying to @loottheroom.bsky.social

I heard 1d6 flies buzz when I died

Catomika- Open for work!!

9 Mar

Reading @idraluna-archives.bsky.social's Zurth hexcrawl and I'm thrilled. There's like a minimum of 10 good ideas per page. I'm Zurthpilled. I'm a Zurthhead. I'm standing on the street asking strangers if they heard of Zurth

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@categerbasi.bsky.social

2 Mar

Orc raiders

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elmcat

@elmc.at

4 Mar

New month, new newsletter. Talking about why I didn't blog this month haha Also including a ton of links to posts I found interesting! elmc.at/catmail-2/

elmc.atCATMAIL #2Look what the cat dragged in. Monthly project updates, plus curated blog posts and oddments worth your time.

𝔗ℜ𝔄ℑ𝔓𝔖𝔈 reposted

Replying to @fallonmyblade.bsky.social

The Coen brothers have such a talent for creating overwhelming malicious and magnetic villains

Hot take on a niche topic: Carousing MISHAPS are better than general "carousing tables." The drift from rolling on a table of silly mishaps if you fail your save(/whatever) to just having a general table you roll on every time a PC carouses has watered down what makes carousing fun.

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My preference is for a fail-state table with some neutral results ("wake up in bed next to someone!") and maybe a positive one ("gambling wins!") over a general table with careful balance of negatives and positives that every carouser rolls on every time. I crave DYNAMISM.

(Now feel free to tell me why I'm wrong)

Rolling on a table is fun of course, BUT the old way hits harder because it gives carousing higher stakes (through chance of failure) while also making failure its own sort of reward (through letting you roll on a silly mishap table).

26 Feb

Turning Bluesky posts into a blog

25 Feb

If you're ever worried about your settlements being underprepped, remember that people used to run years-long campaigns with Wilderlands of High Fantasy which described towns like this:

Roz@allthingstruly.bsky.social

A trap i often see new GMs falling into is thinking that they need to prepare absolutely every detail for every location before they can run a game! Castles and strongholds and their NPCs just need a few things that you can generate at random in order to create an exciting and memorable location!

forlornencystment.blogspot.comThe Village of Hommlet is Too Much: Minimalist Location Sketches for Sandbox PrepSomething I often struggle with when creating a sandbox is the level of detail to give to each location, and at what point in the process to...

25 Feb

See also @forlornencystment.bsky.social post about minimalist location sketches. This should be taught in public schools forlornencystment.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-...

@explorersdesign.bsky.social

24 Feb

I'm glad someone has the courage to speak out against Boblin the Goblin because that has got to go

HODAG RPG@hodagrpg.bsky.social

I'm so tired of the following tropes in RPGs: -Pay off the Ship -Found Family -Authority Bad -Authority Good -Church Bad -Church Good -BBEG* -Kid Character -Race as Morality -Race as Personality -Race as thinly veiled Fetish -Boblin The Goblin *This is distinct from "Main Villain" and "Final Boss"

𝔗ℜ𝔄ℑ𝔓𝔖𝔈 reposted

Clayton

23 Feb

Oh, you thought The Bloggies were over? The Bloggies haven't ended. They might never end. Vote in the Bonus categories this week! Ballot: forms.gle/d6YbnUqiuypv... www.explorersdesign.com/bloggies-2026/

explorersdesign.comThe Bloggies 2026A yearly celebration of blogging in tabletop roleplaying games.