Hey, You Want To See Something Heartbreaking?

If you don't follow gamer drama, lucky you--here's a free dungeon by many of the most well-known authors in Old School gaming, and it's pretty good, too.

If you are up on gamer drama then most of the names will be familiar so, like I said in the title, heartbreaking.

Original post from 2016...

So here's what we did:

You know that old TSR module Palace of the Silver Princess?  Y'know...

When she came it was as exile, descending from tempestuous night in a silver ship. She fled the collapse of her shining principality in the Immeasurable Abide, an implausibly vast agglomeration of paradisiacal cosms beyond the outer void. All she loved of her glittering homelands was consumed by the tyranny that lurks behind all tyrannies: by the Manifest Density which waits at the end of time. An agent of that creed, the Hegemon Ankylose Dysplasia , driven by colossal lust, sought pursuit beyond the Abide but was prevented by his preposterous gravitas and the girth of his pride from passing through the furled dimensions and on to the lesser cosms where the world hangs.

...that one?

Anyway, I farmed out every page to a different DIY D&D Blogger and we rewrote it--I'm shocked with how well it came out. You can use the old maps, but the key has been completely renovated with all new stuff.

Tom Middenmurk wrote a brand new freaky princess legend, Kelvin Green gave us some sweet picture map rooms, Stacy Dellorfano made the Princess' chambers seriously fucked up, Raggi dreamed up some incredibly elaborate ways to screw (or at least frustrate) your players, Humza invented some classy ghouls, James Mal made one of my favorite new trick rooms, and a whole lot more.

Free of course.

So check it here:
Princess of the Silver Palace
by
Tom "Middenmurk" Fitzgerald
David "Yoon Suin" McGrogan
Zzarchov "Neoclassical Geek Revival" Kowalski
Barry "actual Cockney" Blatt
Natalie "Revolution in 21 Days" Bennet"
James "I invented the phrase Gygaxian Naturalism. Sue me" Maliszewski
James Edward "Lotfp" Raggi IV
Trent "New Feierland" B
Humza "Legacy of the Bieth" Kazmi
Ramanan "I make all those cool online generators" S
Reynaldo "Break!" Madrinan
Kelvin "Forgive Us" Green
Daniel "Basic Red" Dean (thanks for picking up the slack on the folks who didn't have time to finish their pages)
Anthony "Straits of Anian" Picaro
Jensen "I talk to Paizo" Toperzer
Logan "Last Gasp" Knight
Kiel "Dungeons and Donuts" Chenier (thanks for the layout!)
Stacy "Contessa" Dellorfano
Patrick "Deep Carbon Observatory" Stuart
Scrap "Fire on the Velvet Horizon" Princess
Ken "Satyr Press" Baumann
and me a little bit


Oh and ps: the ghouls in Trent's last room were invented by Humza, the credits are a little wrong.
-
-
-

Simple Weapon Hairsplitting

I can't remember who wrote it, but there was a blogger post years ago about how every pre-modern weapon developed, from the dart to the bohemian ear-spoon, was developed for a reason. There weren't "good weapons" and "bad weapons"--they had niches they were meant to fill and they did. It's nice because it makes players think about what weapon they're using, and so think about the fight in more detail.

I used this idea a few times--in Demon City, for instance, because it's a game based on horror movies, nearly all weapons, whether a .45 or a flowerpot to the dome, do the same initial damage, but weapons that are better in a given situation vs whatever the other guy has get an advantage to hit.

Somebody recently commissioned me to write a "light and old-school but more tactical" D&D-variant and I used this same idea. The assumption in this game is all weapons do around d6 damage based on the user's class instead of damage by weapon type (in original Warhammer, damage is based on strength) but each has one or more simplified gamey rock-paper-scissors-style feature that make them better in certain situations. So instead of a flail making it easier to get past shields, a flail always ignores shields.

Some notes on these notes:

This game also includes a "block" option, which includes parrying or the like, so in games with no separate parrying step the rule would have to be slightly different.

If a weapon offers a bonus to block I'd usually just translate that into a +1 ac if the user is trained (aka a fighter).

Where it says "bonus" read "+2" in D&Dlike systems.

Cestus: Bonus to hit and damage at hand range (up to arm's length). Minus to both any other time.

Chain: Ignores blocks and shields. Maximum 4 damage. Can be used to grab or grapple.

Club or Mace: Bonus to knock an enemy in heavy armor prone.

Dagger: Throwable. +2 to hit and damage if used in a melee sneak attack. Maximum 4 damage otherwise.

Dart: Bonus to strike at throwing range (30' ish).

Flail: Ignores shields.

Garotte: Can only be used as a surprise or on a grappled enemy. Ignores armor. (Enemy must have a neck.)

Great Axe: +2 damage. -1 to hit.

Greatsword  Can’t be blocked by spears, staffs, pole-arms, can't be used in close-quarters. In a game without a block or parry I'd just make this work like the great axe.

Hand Axe: Throwable.

Heavy pole-arms (halberd, pike, etc): Bonus to damage at spear range (10-12')  An extra block per round at spear range. Can’t be used in close quarters.

Longsword, Shortsword, Scimitar: Bonus to damage and block at sword range.

Net: No damage. A net can be thrown up to 30’ and acts much like a grab on the target’s legs and can be escaped using the same kind of rolls. If the attacker doesn’t hold onto the net (like, they’re killed that round, for example) it can be escaped in one round.

Rapier: Bonus to strike unarmored or leather-equivalent-armor opponents.

Sling: It's basically free and doesn't look like a weapon. Maximum 4 damage but can hit two adjacent opponents at once if you sling a handful of rocks.

Spears and tridents: Throwable. An extra block per round at spear range. Can’t be used in close quarters.

Staff: Doesn’t look like a weapon. An extra block per round at spear range. Maximum 4 damage. Can’t be used in close quarters.

Lance: Bonus to knock a mounted enemy prone. Minus to hit if not mounted.

Warhammer: Bonus to knock a mounted enemy prone.

Whip: Harmless against armor heavier than leather. Maximum 3 damage. Can be used to grab or grapple at a bonus.

For bows: I stuck with the basic D&D idea. The light crossbow is the standard, the shortbow gives you two attacks per round but less damage, the heavy crossbow gives you the most damage but shoots every other round, the longbow gives you more damage than the light crossbow and the best range, but can't be used in close quarters.

-
-
-
To keep it light, I didn't go nuts with the different kinds of swords (sabres and scimitars supposedly being better from horseback, khopesh swords being better for hooking limbs, etc).


For a non-western game I'd add the shuriken does less damage than a dart but can be thrown twice per round and the indian chakram does less damage but has a better to-hit.

Back When The OSR Was Bad

Recently,  Jeff Gameblog was reminding everyone the reason he got started blogging back in 2004 was that the forums sucked, and he wanted to get away from them. The Old School Renaissance he helped start with that blog is a teenager now. Maybe it's looking at colleges.

BACK IN THE DAY

The OSR authors started as bloggers, and they blogged instead of forumed because forums generally suck but the ideas behind the suck took on three major shapes:

The TSR D&D Fan Critique 

This was an online scene that was basically an extension of the fan activity that'd been around in magazines since the '70s:

• Their first objection to OSR stuff was that it was new and not old or, as they might put it, not in the same spirit as the things they liked.
• This morphed into "the OSR with their blogs and using their real names are tall poppies and we hate that" or, as they might put it "preening, money-hungry, arrogant..." etc. 

The WOTC D&D Fan Critique 

At the time this was D&D 3.5 and then D&D 4e in 2008:

• They saw old school as fundamentally creaky and pointless and said the only reason to play was nostalgia.
• By the time of 4e this changed to "the only reason to play was nostalgia and everyone who likes it is a white Republican and uninclusive". Which is weird because Jeff "universally accepted lefty" Rients had been blogging for 4 years at that point but whatever.

PostForge/Indie Gamers/Story-Gamer Critique

This was a self-consciously "let's change things" avant-garde scene which started in the early '00s.

• They had a critique of D&D in general that it mechanically somehow failed to be a fun adventure game.
• Some of them had another critique of D&D in general that it was bad to want a fun adventure game anyway because it wasn't deep or about crying and didn't involve role-playing. And violence is bad and of course games have to....be instructions? idk.
• Their main problem with Old School was that, first, it was a kind of D&D, so already had problems, and that some of the bloggers actually were trying to be articulate in a defense of the game as fun which made it all worse.

FAST FORWARD FIFTEEN YEARS

After five years of  mostly blogging, then five years of tentative steps into the market and then five years of being important enough that everyone in the industry knows at least someone in the OSR, things have changed. Summarizing all the reasons why is another post but basically OSR designers made hard-to-deny commercial headway on all fronts and so now....

The TSR Fan Critique was always kinda doomed because none of them could put out their own product without being muddled in with the existing OSR. And the OSR was nice to people who put out things it liked.  And were they not Old and School and Re-Nascent?

Their critique eventually just became "All the OSR people are preening, money-hungry and arrogant except these few dozen specific people who made the games I like".

The WOTC D&D Fan Critique softened because of the 5th edition of D&D, basically, which was, if not old-school, than way more old-school friendly than the previous two editions and 5e's marketing involved using the '80s legacy (Stranger Things, etc) as a cool retronew thing rather than trying to go "D&D is still relevant despite..." which they'd been trying to do since the '90s.

(The weirdest part was when Something Awful stopped being like "Old School is all Republicans" and actually started an ongoing Old School thread.  They switched to "Ok, we just hate Zak and James who we will say are Republicans and uninclusive despite running the most diverse shops in RPGs" but this was actually an improvement.)

The PostForge/Indie Gamers/Story-Gamer Critique suffered because of larger social changes. They had to go from the post-'90s snobby-rejectionism-as-the-cutting-edge-of-creative-critique to talking-about-inclusion-on-the-internet-with-people-you-avoid-irl-is-the-cutting-edge-of-creative-critique. It was cool to say "If you like Twilight that's great! Sparkles! (Even though it's problematic! Sparkles!)" and so it became uncool to yuck on someone's yum. 

Also: as a movement interested in not just game design principles but also self-publishing and engaging a wider audience for independent games, it was hard to argue with people who were, well....self-publishing and engaging a wider audience for independent games. And making things that looked good doing it. And being, objectively, more inclusive than everyone else. The most popular indie gamer forums now can't shut up about Old School games.

The most interesting thing about this was how they did deal with their old critique. They often would flatter OSR creators by saying "Well Old School D&D was bad back in the day, but you guys fixed that with clearer procedures and prose", though the condescending edge that somehow old school is a guilty pleasure for when you just really want mcnuggets has not gone away, mostly because social media still incentivizes rageposts about What Popular Media Doesn't Get About Itself That I Personally Do And You Will Too If You ReTweet This.

The current hip line on old school play and D&D is that Ok, it's fun but that isn't well-explained by the products and some will be confused.

Honestly, I used to have some sympathy for this argument because it was often made by people who'd flatter me and Jeff and other bloggers by saying "Oh now I get it since you explained it" but I've come around to hard elitism on the subject: 

No, the prose and marketing aren't ever perfect, but seriously even '70s D&D at its creakiest is easier to understand than, like, Paradise Lost or Cronopios and Famas and if you can't understand those I don't get why you think you get to tell creators how you'd do it better. If you played any kind of D&D and didn't have fun and blamed the game instead of your friends you're probably a moron. Children play it. Get a grip.

-

Basically all the designers who have made these 180 turns on old-school games are still around and none of them have apologized for taking stands that they now admit are completely wrong despite buying, promoting and even making Old School-style RPG stuff by the thousands.

Or, to put it another way, they haven't learned anything, and learning is the only good reason to be wrong. 

I've said before: it's weird to have a popular blog whose audience is made entirely of people you're pretty sure can't read, but maybe some future civilization will appreciate this message in a bottle. Don't do what we did. Don't expect things of people. Light the fuse and run. 

-

-

-

Dear Chris McDowall and the OSR Discord

Dear Chris,

After the accusations, you had a big conversation about it and explicitly changed the rules of the OSR Discord to allow lying. This isn't my interpretation, this is literally the decision y'all came to: lying is ok on the Discord.

At a certain point, even you and the folks that thought this up (Shoe Skogen, Cavegirl, Aura etc) must realize it has a downside.

Here's some idiot asking Erika aka IceQueenErika aka Erika Muse, a Something Awful troll, for information.

I don't like therpgsite ever since it went all Maga in 2016 but here I am today, going to the trouble to log into my rpgsite account for the first time in forever to post a picture of Erika saying, just days ago, that I am banned from therpgsite.

This is a very small example, of course, there are dozens of more serious ones. Why are you ok with this?

Chris: I understand--running the Discord helps you sell your book, but seriously how fucked up does the community have to get before you reconsider turning your forum into a troll playground?
-
-
-

Enjoy The Weird Gap Between My Teeth (video interview about everything)

I can't think of a bigger endorsement than that:

Your Radar Sucks

This will be my 15th post under this label:

So, one of the first people I'd never heard of to write a big post railing against me ("the Internet is screaming with the harm you caused" he said "What harm? Who is harmed?" I said "You know!" he said) was Sean Patrick Fannon. He eventually admitted to sexually harassing people.

Tyler Carpenter, an indie gamer who worked on Battletech, beloved by indie game community, and who also attacked me, admitted to sexually harassing people.

Elizabeth Sampat, another indie game darling attacked me for years, then admitted to enabling an abuser who also dated Zoe Quinn and then killed himself.

The moderators at RPGnet were also pretty early on in the hate train. Eventually an RPGnet mod, BlackHatMAtt, was accused of rape. His wife was accused of helping him cover it up (after she'd attacked me, of course).

The folks at Green Ronin games dogpiled into indie gamer hate threads about me and then, well guess what happened?

And we all know Adam Koebel of Dungeon World, who repeatedly harassed me ever since I played his game and didn't like it, was revealed as an abuser.

And now, this guy, Ben Chong:

7 months later:

This dude, who I am not aware of ever having spoken to in my life, ran around tagging a message with Shoe Skogen's stupid #abuseisnotagame hashtag on every message from the witnesses who came out to  tell people the truth. He copy pasted the exact same text like six or seven times. Kimberly points out Mandy's not telling the truth, copy-paste, Frankie points out Mandy's not telling the truth, copy-paste. As always: he didn't engage, provide evidence, or seem to be able to even read what they were saying, just responded like a robot.

Everyone who cares by now has seen the thing where I ask for evidence of any of these peoples' claims against me and they don't have it, even for internet stuff. Everyone knows that people fell in line behind these claims because of instinct and "red flags".

Game community: your instincts suck. 

People you think "seem safe" suck. It's almost as if the way to find the innocent person would be to look for the person who is always at odds with the endless, evasive, avoidant bullshit that let 

...Adam Koebel

and Ben Chong

and Sean Patrick Fannon

AND Tyler Carpenter

and Elizabeth Sampat

and RPGnet

and Green Ronin...

...all slide for all these years.

The biggest red flag is when someone doesn't argue with you people.

This Whole Cheesy Place

Here for the first time is the whole map of Broceliande, the knights-and-faeries part of Cube World:

Click to enlarge

As I may have mentioned before, it's based on a cheese map of France.

If you zoom in you can see the encounter tables:

The monster lit is bottom left, the landscapes for encounters are top right, and the town generator is at the bottom of this post.

If you like the look of it, the new Cube World (#18) is set entirely there:

Prison-Pyramid of the Vast Maggot and other sources of unnecessary conflict includes...

-The ​Pyramide du Poitou​ gives its name to both this module and the elven barony it occupies. A terrifying twenty-room dungeon-prison for some of the most deadly foes of the Church of Vorn--grim gray god of iron, rust, and rain. The Pyramide is mapped out and the area around it is sketched. Bonus: the Vornic rune alphabet.

-The ​Time Thieves ​are an awful, level-draining pain-in-the-ass mutant NPC party who’ve set up shop in an abandoned fairground within Gérome, a chaotic barony beset by invaders from all sides.

-Like the Pyramide, ​St Paulin Priory​ also lends it name to the area around it. Among the dangers lurking in the ruins of the once proud barony is a mad monk who’s attempted to transform his fellow anchorites into “angels”. It didn’t work of course and now they’re horrible. Even for this place, which has Violet Leopard Orchids.

-Hrothgar Grasp​ and his sorcerous pack-apes roam the wastes of southern Broceliande in search of knowledge. A legendary wizard, not to be trifled with casually and a challenge for very clever players only. Even his monkeys can disintegrate you.

-The Duc de la Rouchefoucauld ​will, at least, only fight you if you ask him to. The bad news is he’s good at it--among the most renowned duellists in Broceliande. The other bad news is he’ll turn you into a fish if he wins. It does mean this module includes duelling rules, though. And fish that once were warriors.

-Vast Shrike Crossing ​is (finally) an adventure suitable for low-level parties. Smart ones anyway. Stupid ones will find themselves blundering into four 6hd monsters all at once and probably, let’s face it, crying. After fighting goblins. And bandits. Ok maybe it’s a mid-level adventure? They’ll be fine, I’m sure.

17 page pdf plus maps and treasure tables

10$ / 12$ on OnlyFans

Email me: zakzsmith AT hawtmayle if you don't already know how to order.