A Clue Sandbox

I put together a horror adventure for the Demon City backers and I'm making it available to y'all if you want it.

It's a "clue sandbox", meaning that there's some trouble and clues and people to ask about the trouble in every direction. There are dozens of NPCs fleshed out, along with their daily movements around the city and their (every-shifting) connection to The Horror. The idea being: the PCs can start anywhere and find their way (by hundreds of possible routes) into solving the murder--or becoming the next victim.

It's for Demon City, of course, but it's not a mechanics-heavy adventure so would be pretty easy to run in any horror system.

So far I haven't had any complaints from the backers, so...if you want one, email me: zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm. 20 Bucks.

Another Cube World available!

 

This one is a mass battle set in the Lands of the Southern Daimyos--get it in The Store.

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Hey You Know What's Fun That You Did Not Know Was Fun?

It was with trepidation that I opened Deadly Fusion. What a terrible cover. Unremembered, unloved, seemingly unread and unreviewed, and not even having DC Heroes’ usual snappy trade-dress, that terrible cover-art it looks doubly off-brand. Was this review just going to be a string of jokes?

It was not. Despite everything, Deadly Fusion turns out to be a really interesting module, and I’d hope to see more things like it or inspired by it.

Like TSR did with their Marvel game Mayfair seems to have decided to let their superhero adventure modules be a place where designers got to experiment with mutant formats and ideas. When you look at old fantasy, horror and sci-fi adventures you see the beginnings of things we still see all the time today—normal scene-chains (sometimes expanding into scene webs), and location-based sandboxes. This isn’t one of those. Like Marvel’s Secret Wars and Nightmares of Futures Past, Deadly Fusion spawned no descendants, and that’s a shame.

New adventure formats are rare, and not enough people complain about it.

Deadly Fusion is called a “match play” and what that means is it’s for two people who both take the role of player sometimes and GM sometimes, specifically here:

-Using one of two books, one player GM’s the other player—as Batman—going through some scenes in Gotham City investigating a plot which eventually leads to the Joker.

-These scenes alternate (every two or three) with the Batman player acting as GM (using the other book) to get Superman through some scenes in Metropolis investigating a plot which eventually leads to Lex Luthor.

-That's most of the adventure. But then for the last section both players then stop and begin reading: the two separate books become separate Choose Your Own Adventure style books with paragraphs ending in choices for their respective characters—you go to the numbered paragraph and read the next thing—with the possibility of skill checks and fights along the way.

-Then the characters (and their players) re-unite fight or talk or both, and then make some decisions together, then finish the Choose Your Own Adventure thing to see what happens.

It’s super weird, and not perfect—especially the end—but surprisingly well-done. The whole thing is enabled by a few interesting techniques:

-First: limiting information. The two-book format, the investigation structure, plus the fact that the two investigations are separate for most of the game gets rid of the problem of the GM-player’s metaknowledge getting in the way of being fair. The Batman character doesn’t have enough information to figure out anything about Batman’s mystery while reading Superman’s and vice versa. The game doesn’t quite stick the landing at the end but it offers some intriguing tools which could’ve probably been leveraged to do it, which we’ll see below.

-Using superheroes. Superheroes don’t much sandbox: if Lois is in trouble, you go save Lois. This allows the GM to be sure that if the PC survives, they’re going to get to the next scene eventually without too many railroad nurses or nudges. 

-Using specific characters: Both of these scenarios wouldn’t work if you had a PC with telepathy, but, no: you have Superman, you have Batman. This allows the creation of very specific scenes and challenges and for the game designer to anticipate—with a fair degree of certainty—the range of outcomes. It also has some fun side-effects, as we’ll see.

You can start to see right away some of the barriers to this kind of adventure catching on, the main one being: this isn’t the kind of writing that can arise organically from normal RPG play. Unlike a typical adventure module or even a ruleset, this kind of match-play requires one person to set it up—including dropping in hidden information for both sides—and then to hand it over to two other people and not participate at all in the resulting game. It has to be a product. It isn’t the kind of thing that’s just an extension of what a GM might make at home for their own campaign.

Also: it’s not re-usable. You play once and pretty much it’s used up. And it requires two GMs. I think in the internet era, however, this could be a very good fit for, say, two RPG internet friends to play on Zoom.

So, the details:

Good

-Great scene: Batman has to interrogate a pawn shop guy behind bullet-proof glass named Gus Rogers. Gus isn’t especially crooked but he thinks Batman’s an idiot and makes fun of him, which seems like a fun thing to roleplay. When the scene gets to the breaking point, Gus runs off, if Batman pursues him he ends up in Crime Alley and has to deal with a My Parents Are Dead flashback. This is the kind of thing you can only do if you are playing an established character and the module really plays it for all it’s worth.

-When Batman gets to the docks ““straddling the littered sidewalks, overweight sailors seasoned with equal parts saltwater and rum, stagger about and decry their sorry plights” then ask batman for a drink. If he gets rough he has to fight

lol

-Because he actually isn’t the villain behind everything, when Batman meets the Joker the Joker’s confused and thinks he’s been drugged and taken to the Batcave. This is a good way to make the Batman player interact with the Joker instead of just immediately punch him.

-The real villain in the end is Brainiac—who wants to blow up Metropolis and Gotham. In the final scenes, if Batman or Superman loses their fight to Luthor or the Joker, then the player takes over Luthor or the Joker and they have to foil Brainiac, because their city is at risk, too—I love that.

Bad

-After explaining the format, both the “Batman” and “Superman” books start with a fake article about getting energy from cold fusion and shouldn’t. There’s no reason the GM needs this information and I can see it spoiling some surprises and challenges for them when they take on the player role—I wonder if someone higher-up asked for this to be put in at the last minute to make it easier to understand the technological plot points that come up later

-They also have a page up front saying what the hero knows about the other hero and about The Joker and Lex Luthor. Like the fake article, I don’t think this serves much purpose except to tip the module’s hand as to who the villains are, but y’know, LotFP hadn’t invented profit-share-modules yet so a freelancer’s gotta hit that word count. (The author's read Dark Knight Returns--Batman thinks Superman’s “patriotism prevents him from making the most of his abilities”.)

-There’s also a place to “Use this section to (secretly) mark your answer to the offer made to you by the Joker/Luthor during Encounter Eight” —to keep it secret from the other player/GM. Nice idea, it shouldn’t be in this part of the book because, again, tipping the module’s hand. You don’t need to know you;ll meet the Joker or Luthor this early.

-A lot of indulging in that mainstream RPG vice: endless statblocks for normal people. Lois Lane has an Aura of 2. Did you know that? I like this bit 

Most notable about Lois are the conflicting aspects of her remarkably resourceful intelligence and her unerring ability to fall directly into deadly criminal schemes.

 Fair.

Also I don’t completely remember what "Aura" is but it has something to do with personality and mystical oomph I am 100% sure Lois has more of it than fucking Jimmy Olsen. Also featured: Cat Grant (who I, who have read almost all comic books, barely have heard of), Margaret Sawyer (who I have never heard of) and Officer William Henderson (ditto). They each get a column of descriptions to themselves but no picture at all, which seems like the opposite of what you’d want had anyone but the writer given a fuck about this module. A lot of the personality information they’re trying to get across so the GM could role-play them could’ve been gotten across in one picture or—better yet—a comic panel where they’re saying some characteristic catch-phrase

-They do some railroading they could very easily have avoided. They basically offer nursing and nudging options to get PCs to move to the next scene, but since DC Heroes offers xp for all kinds of things, the module could easily make it like “If the player correctly follows the clue, they get Hero Points, if Jimmy Olsen has to point it out to them, they don’t”. You lose something for not solving the challenge, but it doesn’t affect the module’s ability to take you to one of the next scenes. Since this is primarily a superhero game (so about role-playing and fights) rather than a detective game (about the convolutions of solving or not solving various riddles on time), and it obviously requires the two players to submit to the unusual format in order to be playable, I think this is a good compromise. Also: Hero Points are a spendable xp stat, so if you don’t solve shit yourself, it does legitimately affect your game later, which is nice, without having to write an endlessly branching octopus module to account for every twist the story might take.

-The Choose-Your-Own Adventure doesn’t quite work. Obviously it’s less fun to have the two friends, after having been talking to each other throughout the game, have to go off separately and do homework—and, more than that, the choices they have to make don’t really offer an interesting range of options or involvement with the mechanics. However, it really seems like some of what they did with each player having information the other didn’t could have been used in another way to make a more interesting and surprising climax. The cover shows Superman and Batman about to fight—which they probably won’t—but I think it would’ve been worth railroading the heroes into fighting if they could’ve made it into an interesting wargame with some secret info on both sides. Or, better yet, ended with them both fighting something that has pre-programmed surprise moves like "In round three, whoever last interacted with Brainiac gets their brain transferred into a pig" etc.

Weird

-In Batman’s endless statblock, perhaps as a deliberate choice, Batman is not carrying “omnigadgets” as he is in the normal DC Heroes rules from this era. Omni-gadgets are a (great) catch-all rule which allow gadgeteering characters to pull out until-then-unexpected pieces of equipment like shark repellent, which is pretty true to the genre. It makes sense that for this adventure, what Batman’s carrying is standardized, like: this is what you have to work with on this day in Gotham. There are also traces of DC Heroes designer Ray Winninger’s maniacal “quantify fucking everything in rules terms” ethos with Batman’s miniature camera described as having the “Recall” power at 3 with the limitation “Only Recalls visual information” instead of just saying it’s a fucking camera. The cassette recorder has Recall: 10 for some reason.

This is clearly a Batman influenced by the Dark Knight Returns era, described as “…a callous and obsessive veteran of a dark and malignant war”. 

-Superman’s statblock: No super-ventriloquism it’s a cover-up. 

-Information on what Superman knows about the Joker, Luthor and Batman (“as ruthless and violent as any proclaimed hero to have ever lived” which seems a little extreme considering Superman lives in a world where Lobo and Brainiac’s son have had their own comic book for a year, but whatever).

-Joker— Motivation: Psychopath. Occupation: Psychopath

-Commisioner Gordon is only one point tougher than Jimmy Olsen I call bullshit.

-Now the adventure begins with the Superman player GMing the Batman player as Bruce Wayne in the mansion: You see the bat-signal but also, to let you know about a separate incident, Alfred tells you that he saw one of the alert buttons blinking while he was dusting the Batcave. Is that really how that works? 

-The map of Gotham City (above) does not look like any map of Gotham City I’ve ever seen.

The current canonical map—which looks like Manhattan only fat and drunk—was drawn, I think, by Eliot R Brown (the guy who did the technical drawings in DC Who’s Who and Marvel’s OHOTMU as well as all those Punisher comic pages where it’s just pictures and technical specs of his guns) for the No Man’s Land storyline.

The current canonical Metropolis looks like Manhattan sideways and, likewise, does not look like the Metropolis in this book.

-The read-aloud text is very purple.

Superman: “The city is a beacon of hope to the teeming millions, representing all that is good and true of the American dream.”

Batman: ““Every single inhabitant of this decaying borough at once envies your strength and hates you for it.” “The store itself reeks of a mingled stench of aged sweat and gun oil.”

I’m going to say something strange: I think the read-aloud text is good in this module. I usually hate read-aloud text but a thing like this where you and a friend pretend to be Batman and Superman is probably best played in a spirit of slightly ironic indulgence (after all, if you play too seriously you just have Batman just call the rest of the Justice League as soon as he sees trouble). Ham it up, read to each other. You don’t have 4 people waiting to start arguing about how to cross the orc moat—I could see it working.

-There’s a minisystem for computer hacking where basically different levels of security have more digits and the better you roll the more of those digits you get for free and the rest you have to guess. It’s a nice idea but the game doesn’t really show why having to brute force the remaining numbers is bad. In theory it’s a time-sink but since, unlike a typical dungeon, the game has no random encounter there’s no particular reason not to say “Ok, I try every digit starting with 1, then every digit starting with 2…”. It would’ve worked fine if they’d put a ticking clock in there.

Now I've said already "Someone should make one of these" and, fine, in writing this I twisted my arm.

I'm getting to work writing and drawing one now. More later.

The Cat, The Sphinx, and The Spinneskelle

The Spinneskelle is a weird automaton that can fit into pretty much any adventure, the Black Sphinx is the answer to the riddle of why an obsessed scholar won't leave his library, and the demon cat of St Ylvyst's Hospital for Imbeciles and the Mad is just a jerk.

Available for 12$ in The Store.

I Put Ninjas in LotFP

The original Violence in the Nympharium had five or six adventures set in 17th century Japan. Four of them are now available in The Store.

The Barony That Has The Temple that Has The Room That Has The Toad Demons

 New stuff. Check the Store.

The Barony That Has The Temple that Has The Room That Has The Toad Demons

Bad monsters are in a room. It’s a pretty good room, as fantasy adventure module rooms go, and presents some interesting problems.

The room’s in a Toad Temple, which has some cultists--before they get to the room with the monsters, your players may have to fight them, too, or maybe just sneak past. If I knew already, your game would be pretty boring.

Around the temple is the idyllic and rambling rural Broceliandaise barony of Gruyère de Comté whose distinctive features include:

-The lovely convent of Tittivila (or Tittivila, or Tittivilla) a goddess of all flesh to whom misspellings are sacred and one of the top two most popular deities in Broceliande. Although most of the nuns are just 0-levels who pray and read books on how to breed weird livestock all day, if you’re running a campaign in Broceliande, genuine fighting clerics of Tittivila will be pretty thick on the ground, so I’ve given some information about them, including a random table at the back.

-The alchemists of Gruyère de Comté, who are some of the few folks from whom your lazy Skyrim-addict player’s PC can just “buy potions” in Broceliande.

-The Festival of Japes, a happy festival, for those who seek amusement or exotic cuisine

-Skopje, a village with a delightful secret

-and a bunch of chaos-worshipping creatures bent on destroying everything in the first three bullet points

So that’s probably enough to be going on with.

5$ / 7$ on OnlyFans

Also out:

The Halfling City

Cube World #24

It's got a syrup cyclops and gnolls and a d100 random halfling patron assignment generator and yeah a lot it's 10$ / 12$ if you use OnlyFans

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.
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The Store

Welcome to The Store

These are the RPG materials I use at home--annotated and statted and presented to be usable to everyone--including modular megadungeon pieces, over a hundred pages of things from projects that got cancelled from LotFP and other publishers, the random tables I use in games, and much more about the world that includes Vornheim, Red & Pleasant Land, and Maze of the Blue Medusa. 

If response continues to be good, these pdfs will continue to go up. Newest releases are at the top. Instructions on how to buy are at the bottom of the entry where it says "How To Order".

Each Cube World release stands alone--you don't need to read anything else here to run them.

Cube World #60 -- God Generator

This is an all-purpose generator for gods in fantasy role-playing games. I wanted to avoid making tables to roll on just for the fun of rolling on them, and instead put the emphasis on allowing for as wide a variety of deities as possible while quickly providing details that are actually useful in running a game and which give the gods and religion an interesting and unique role to play in a campaign. 

While I’ve seen similar generators before, they tend to have a different focus–either providing so little that they put the GM in a position of making up the memorable details of the deity from whole cloth, or they provide so many details that the generator becomes its own lonely game, bogging the GM down in minutiae that doesn’t really see utility at the table and providing mismatched results that have to be ignored in order for the god or faith to be interesting. In both cases, the same thing occurs–you make one or two gods, then get bored.

I aimed for a generator that worked like the best character generation systems: providing options but also inspiration at each step, making the user not only eager to create new creatures but to see how they will work in the game world.

I also included a tool for making specific spells and abilities that match a god's specific domain.

I put the first 5 gods I invented using the generator at the end.

15$

Cube World #59 -- A Pair of Megadungeon rooms

It’s nice to have a big dungeon, but there’s no need to build it all at once. Such places are wild, with disparate sights to see and challenges to challenge—often of unknown origin.

These are a pair of rooms to be slotted into such a place.

“This Better Be Good” has the PC party coming upon a team of goblins seeking treasure. The treasure is down there, but it’ll take some cleverness to get at it.

“Captured!” is a good room to have around when party members are defeated without immediate hope of rescue. There may be circumstances where—instead of just killing them—intelligent foes would be expected to cart the PCs off to be dealt with by their master. Well: this is where they cart them to.

This installment of Cube World has a special price and can't be bought with human money--contact me to get it!

Cube World #58 -- I Just Need a Dungeon

I just need a dungeon.

All my friends are coming–in half an hour and I have nothing. Nothing at all.

They need a dungeon. Something where four to five friends can comfortably duel and dwell for an afternoon.

Here it is: three easy-to-run dungeons, one map. One with goblins and dwarves, one with a crazy wizard, one underwater, They’ll do the trick. 

These dungeons can be at the bottom of a long stair leading down from the surface or they can be parts of larger dungeons.

10$

Cube World #57 Evil City-State Generator

You’ve got your swords, you’ve got your sorcery, you’ve got your mighty-thewed warrior, you’ve got your diamond-eyed monkey idol of Chuul, but you know what you still need? An evil city-state.

There has to be a place where a man with a pointy hat and yet pointier beard points from the top of a pointy tower and tells something from the cover of a pulp magazine to eat your players. That’s an important thing. In fact, if fantasy fiction is to be believed, you need lots of them.

You need several iterations of a small, local, evil place, so here you go.

10$

Cube World #56 Defense of the Ruined City

This installment of Cube World features an adventure in the Lands of the Southern Daimyos where the players are put in charge of an entire army. They must simultaneously direct their forces in battle as well as locate and take on the ferocious Onibaba herself--commander of the enemy forces.

10$ 

 

Cube World #55 Fucking Bards

"Bidwall Claspit (Specialist Level 5) Thin-lipped and narrow, this former royal architect’s assistant was fired in disgrace after he was discovered using his specialized knowledge of the palace to purloin the queen’s collection of tortoiseshell combs for purposes unknown. He now attempts to make a living as a flautist—a career for which he is ill-suited, despite a winning disposition."

This all-text installment of Cube World was boiled up from the charred remains of a project that never saw the light of day: “Bards”--a semi-serious book that Lamentations of the Flame Princess head James Edward Raggi IV commissioned about the worst character class in all fantasy because he has a bad sense of humor and hates me.

Five pages of jokes and 11 pages of actually useful stuff, the Troubadour class was previously published on this blog but the rest is new.

10$

Cube World #54 Crawling Lake and The Ghost Army

This installment of Cube World features two and a half adventures: 

Crawling Lake is a short scenario that leads up to The Test -- one of those massive pain-in-the-ass dungeons designed by insane wizards to test adventurers, 

The Ghost Army is a thorny but simple scenario involving trickery and intrigue which puts the party at the center of a (potential?) battle between three armies. 

12$

Cube World #53 Quiet Places

This installment of Cube World features two unusually quiet dungeons: 

In The Lost City of Zirzuzza aka The Quiet Place--which takes place deep in the desert that covers The Scorpion Lands--the party will discover a city long abandoned. One of the abandoned palaces contains a great treasure, but the party must navigate a strange mechanism to acquire it. 

The Polder lies deep within any larger dungeon of the game-master’s choosing. Although the effects of visiting The Polder are wildly unpredictable, it is perfectly safe--but this in itself might frighten a party away. 

10$

Cube World #52 The Fox Witch and The Freckled Hog

The Fox Witch, Eng-Ti is wild beyond imagining, and her hovel houses wonders, yet it is a place of woe.

The Freckled Hog is a tavern--and a good place for a fight. Clever players may find what they need there without throwing a punch, but something interesting is bound to happen.

10$

Cube World #51 Four Elementals And A Giant's Gut

This installment of Cube World features two scenarios:

In You Can’t Say You Weren’t Warned the party is told exactly where to find their way to the heart of a complex full of terrifying creatures. Now the only problem is the terrifying creatures.

In The Vast Gut of Kvertelak the party is again told exactly where their goal is: in the stomach of 240’ frost giant. Piece of cake.

10$

Cube World #50 Hell On Earth (and in Hell)

Two adventures here: one unleashes The Four Beasts on a small and wartorn sandbox, and another takes players to A Small Hell where the party will have to climb over thousands of damned souls and dodge all manner of demons to get to the end.

10$

Cube World #49 Two Gimmicky Dungeons

This installment of Cube World features two dungeons:

The Cartographer--a simple mapping challenge for players just learning to use their heads (which can take place anywhere. If the players figure out the gimmick, they’ll breeze through it, so it’s the kind of thing you might want to use as part of a larger adventure. If they don’t figure it out right away, it’ll be pretty funny when, after hours of fighting supernatural abominations, you tell them what they missed.

The Genizah is an adventure where players are probably going to want to learn to use stealth to avoid trouble. At heart it’s a simple a dungeon made to showcase a gauntlet of unusual enemies--so feel free to play up the atmosphere. It has golems and rabbis and cobras.

10$

Cube World #48 Two Cults

This installment of Cube World features two adventure set-ups featuring cults. Artistic Differences--which takes in the city of Port Gobelins in the chivalrous land of Broceliande--features three real historical people and the (probably) made-up octopus with which they are involved, The Cult of the Droll God--whose headquarters can be anywhere--is a conspiracy of jesters.

10$.

Cube World #47 The Pentamorph and More

This installment of Cube World features two adventures for players who can plan their schemes carefully. Five Powers of the Pentamorph--which takes in the city of Eelport in the chivalrous land of Broceliande--features a foe that has different abilities depending on how the party decides to approach it, One Last Score--which takes place in Tellach Avail, a beautiful city set hidden in the immense desert wastes of the Scorpion Lands--is a heist with a time limit.

10$

Cube World #46 Goblins and Murder

Masked goblins of the ports, the Goblin Market, and a murder mystery!

12$

Cube World #45 Warmutants of the Cube

A generator for every kind of dangerous mutant animal along with adventures to put them in--10$.

Cube World #44 Traps traps traps

The next installment of Cube World contains two dungeon adventures full of traps: Abelard Goatslayer and the Temple of Angra Mainyu.

10$

Cube World #43 The Stair and The Vizier's Secret

A pair of small dungeons with unusual set-ups--one can go anywhere, another takes place on the outskirts of the wondrous city known as Abuzin Zeer, in the Scorpion Lands.

10$

Cube World #42 The Cat, The Sphinx, and the Spinneskelle

The Spinneskelle is a weird automaton that can fit into pretty much any adventure, the Black Sphinx is the answer to the riddle of why an obsessed scholar won't leave his library, and the demon cat of St Ylvyst's Hospital for Imbeciles and the Mad is just a jerk.

Three short adventures, 12$.

Cube World #41 In The Lands of the Southern Daimyos

The original Violence in the Nympharium had five or six adventures set in 17th century Japan. These versions are set in Cube World, along with a map of the area--20$.

Cube World #40 In The Rolling Green

Witch, changeling, banshee--three flexible scenarios featuring mystery, investigation, death and maybe romance depending how your players do it -- 15$.

Cube World #39 Tomb of the Spider God and The Idiot Well

Two complete dungeons, one suitable for low-level parties, one suitable for clever ones, 10$.

Cube World #38 Three At Sea

Three adventures at sea--turtle island, mantamen, derelict ships, werewolf pirates. You know--like in the ocean.

12$ 

Cube World #37 Secrets of the Imperial Lands

In the East, a great Emperor holds sway. His vast and elegant empire is home to The Assassin's Opera, the Gongs of Inversion, the Lair of the Malachite Beast, and much more.

10$.

Cube World #36 -- Cube World Sandbox Kit

I have a bunch of tables and tools I use regularly at the table outside the ones already published in, like Vornheim and similar books. They go into the Cube World Sandbox Kit, 24 pages, with pictures (plus the most updated versions of the bestiary and treasure tables, of course).

20$.

I Am The Weapon Playtest Draft

Someone once commissioned me to write a superhero game with rules based on Demon City. It turned out great! My favorite character generation system, every power in the world, other dimensions, super comic-booky combat. Except: I never got to finish it.

It's now a very long text document with minimal formatting and lots of typos.

20$

Cube World #35  -- Cube World Atlas

A visual guide to the world containing Vornheim, the Red & Pleasant Land, the Devoured Land from Frostbitten & Mutilated, the Maze of the Blue Medusa and every other thing I made up for my campaign.

15 maps, 14 continents, with overviews of what goes on in each one, including major cities and landmarks, notes on encounters, and a few options for sandbox campaigns that can take your players all over the Cube.

20$--now available in The Store.

Cube World #34 Tower of the Rakshasa

It is always night-time when you find the tower, located somewhere in the Peacock Isles. It appears to be ancient, neglected, crumbling...

A dungeon in the Peacock Isles, along with an introduction to the Isles themselves. Now available in The Store.

12$.

Cube World #33 The Half-King's Tourney

A guide to running tournaments in the Half-King's Court in Broceliande.

The price for this one is special: it's free but you have to write a review of a Zak product to get it. The review can be good or bad but must be at least 200 words, it has to be on a gamer forum or gamer-specific social media site (not your blog or other space) and must be free of any factual errors. Screencap your review and email me to get the pdf.

Cube World #32 Two Temples

A pair of one page puzzley dungeons: the Temple of Neutrality and the Temple of the Centipede God.

The price for this one is special: it's free but you have to write a review of a Zak product to get it. The review can be good or bad but must be at least 200 words, it has to be on a gamer forum or gamer-specific social media site (not your blog or other space) and must be free of any factual errors. Screencap your review and email me to get the pdf.

Cube World #31 Welcome To Cesaire

Cesaire is a place of great waterfalls, green-blue jungle, elephants, lions, cheetahs, ancient civilizations and wide, bloodstained savannah.

This installment is an introduction-it includes a description of the subcontinent as a whole, animals and other inhabitants that are found nowhere else, customs, and a handful of short adventures. If you’re new to Cube World, don’t worry, there’s nothing in the previous installments about this area of the world--you have in your hands everything that’s been published so far on Cesaire.

20$

Cube World #30 The Plague Pyramid

A new cult has arisen, worshipping death by plague and its locus is somewhere in the hinterlands, centered around a bizarre structure. Whether the plague pyramid is the result of a mad necromancer’s experiments with the mcguffin or whether the magic inside simply a response from a traumatized plague-ridden land itself is unclear. Either way, thousands of refugees have abandoned the cities and staggered mesmerized toward the infested pyramid, where a Plague Jester urges them on to the most debased and degrading acts.

The pdf is 5 bucks.

Cube World #29 The Unseelie Lands

This installment of Cube World is a sandbox depicting the Unseelie Lands of Tomme de Savoie, where the witch-queen Nyctalis reigns. It is located within the larger continent of Broceliande--a place of faction, chivalry, and enchanted glades.

Tomme de Savoie is, for most characters, behind enemy lines. The forest is, itself, evil. The creatures in it are evil, the animals are evil, even the plants are evil.

A sandbox adventure--where characters choose objectives and roam as they see fit--is a different affair in such a place. It will not be easy to acquire provisions, equipment, arms and armor or a safe place to sleep. So, as the GM, remember to reward players with lots of treasure to keep the ratio of risk to reward reasonable.

12 pages plus Treasure Tables and Bestiary

5$  unless you use OnlyFans, then it's 7$. 

Cube World #28 Pool of Blood

This adventure takes place deep within the deserts of the Scorpion Lands, in the Valley of Nas Akhu Khan, within Syrinx, the former empire of the Necropharoah, now infested with vile jackalmen.

The area explored is the Bastion of the Second Soul of Kheftiu Asar Butchiu, an underground temple which is—wouldn’t you know it?—rumored to contain vast wealth.

It’s a small dungeon suitable for a night or three of play and the main issue is getting out. Leaving requires three keys and finding them all requires thoroughly exploring the dungeon.

5$ via venmo etc. 7$ if you use onlyfans email zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm if you can't figure out know how to pay.

Cube World #27 The Teratocracies

Q: Forty-two pages! Fuck.

A: Yeah.

Q:  What, pray tell, are The Teratocracies?

A:   They are the scattered settlements, throughout Broceliande, ruled by monsters, by

beasts, by tyrant mutant-lords and their followers.

Q: Well that sounds like a standard pulp fantasy trope.

A:  Yup. That’s why I thought maybe people might want this toy to play with even if they

weren’t running games in the chivalrous, fae-haunted wilds of Broceliande.

Q:   And where are The Teratocracies?

A:  They are in randomly-generated locations outside the civilized areas, so that

adventuring parties can stumble upon them or be sent to find them.

Q: How does it work?

A:  Well first you randomly generate a map location for the settlement the monster runs, then you randomly generate a headquarters from which the teratocrat rules, then you roll a thrall population--the kinds of creatures the monster has charmed or enslaved...got all that so far?

Q : Yes  I do.

A:  Well then you roll up some other creatures on the Troublemakers table that are elsewhere in Broceliande that are connected to the settlement, then you see how big the settlement is and then you roll on a big table saying who the Teratocrat is (like: what monster) and what’s special about them and who helps them be monstrous.

Q: Are there other resources I can use here?

A:  Funny you should ask, yes there are. There’s a d1000 Things About Villains table which is mostly mutations but also other things that make villains stand out, there’s a Troublemakers table which is good for generating load-bearing NPCs typical of all the areas in Broceliande and there are town and ruin generators at the end there.

Q: Can you do other things with the tables?

A:  Yeah, you could make a big monster army with it, by rolling more times on the Advisors and Enforcers columns, and rolling more on the Things About Villains table for each unit. You’d use the Advisors as lieutenants. You could even build two teratocracies, roll d20 enforcers for each side and play a little wargame with a friend.

Q:I rolled up a Teratocracy and I don’t like it.

A:  Roll another one.

Q: Oh this one is cool I like it.

A:  See? Wasn’t that fun?

Q: What else do I get?

A: In addition to this you also get any of the 5$ pdfs of your choice below for free.

15$ on VenMo and stuff/18$ on OnlyFans

Cube World #26 Meat On The Table

So, if you're like me, you're sick of rolling random wilderness encounters in a sandbox campaign and then it just says like "57-Ghost" or "34-Venomous snake" and then I'm like "Fuck who wrote this table?" and then having to be like "Oh right, I did".

So I wrote a whooooooole big table of wilderness encounters with

100 Civilian encounters, like:

90 Halfling(s) moving to a new home in The Halfling City, or one of the Pudding Coasts (d4).
91 Halfling(s) moving to a new home in elven, human, or dwarven lands (d4).
92 Halfling(s) on so many drugs just vibing.

100 Dubious travelers, like:

265-266 Lone wererat disguised as (roll on Civilian table), it will be moving in the same direction as the party and share the journey with them, waiting for an ideal time to call in d4 compatriots, steal something valuable, cut their throats, and sneak off.

267 Wererats in their half-rat form (d6+1), chewing on dead horses just off the road.

268 Tracks enlarge and change from rat to human, leading to a wererat den beneath a bridge or in a ruin (2d6 wererats).

100 Military encounters, like:

309 Gnoll hunting party—clan out looking for big game or fast-moving enemies. 3d6+2 gnolls all mounted on giant boars, gnoll chief hunter, also mounted, with vulture or eagle.
310 Gnoll hunting party taking prey—as Hunting Party above. Taking: 1-7 Herd of deer, 8-11 sheep and goats, 12-17 wild horses, 18-19 giant monster, 20 unicorn.

100 Goblin encounters, like:

521 Goblins smacking farm animals (d6).
522 Goblin scouts “surveying” (pointing to random landscape features, holding a telescope) (d6).
523 Goblins carrying off a random hogtied NPC (roll d100 on Civilians table) (d6).
524 Goblins teasing local children (d6).

Plus bandits and weird wildlife and more...

And if you're like "Oh what's a cannibal mermaid though?" so I also did a bestiary. It's still growing but it has all the monsters from these tables in them.

And I also wrote a bounty-hunting adventure to go with them, with a spooky swamp and a vampire. 

15$ on VenMo and stuff/18$ on OnlyFans

The Barony That Has The Temple that Has The Room That Has The Toad Demons

(Cube World #25)

Bad monsters are in a room. It’s a pretty good room, as fantasy adventure module rooms go, and presents some interesting problems.

The room’s in a Toad Temple, which has some cultists--before they get to the room with the monsters, your players may have to fight them, too, or maybe just sneak past. If I knew already, your game would be pretty boring.

Around the temple is the idyllic and rambling rural Broceliandaise barony of Gruyère de Comté whose distinctive features include:

-The lovely convent of Tittivila (or Tittivila, or Tittivilla) a goddess of all flesh to whom misspellings are sacred and one of the top two most popular deities in Broceliande. Although most of the nuns are just 0-levels who pray and read books on how to breed weird livestock all day, if you’re running a campaign in Broceliande, genuine fighting clerics of Tittivila will be pretty thick on the ground, so I’ve given some information about them, including a random table at the back.

-The alchemists of Gruyère de Comté, who are some of the few folks from whom your lazy Skyrim-addict player’s PC can just “buy potions” in Broceliande.

-The Festival of Japes, a happy festival, for those who seek amusement or exotic cuisine

-Skopje, a village with a delightful secret

-and a bunch of chaos-worshipping creatures bent on destroying everything in the first three bullet points

So that’s probably enough to be going on with.

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The Halfling City

(Cube World #24)

This installment of Cube World is all about The Halfling City which, for the time being, has no other name.

Settled within the Elven territory of Broceliande on the Hogspot river, it is a place of friendly domes, pools of syrup, frighteningly vigorous food-fights, and constant competition.

Being quite comfortable with most forms of commercial relation, and eager to delegate tasks which might require violence or plausible deniability (including but not limited to: foiling rivals, escorting trade goods, eliminating creatures that prey on shipping and locating lost or coveted valuables behind doors which might be variously locked, trapped, guarded, or all three) to freelancers, urban halflings are great patrons of the adventuring classes. It is, therefore a good place for PCs who like to keep busy.

This pdf includes:

-Notes on the city in general, including the Halflings' contest to name it

-An encounter table and guide to the major commercial houses

-An adventure-generator for PCs seeking work in the city

        -Notes on the syrup-eating cyclops, a terrifying problem for which the City                 has yet to find a solution

10$ /12$ on OnlyFans

Screaming Lake

(Cube World #23)

A very LotFP 17th century one-shot (?) adventure.

10$ /12$ on OnlyFans

Temple of the Bastard Elves (And Other Outstanding Issues)

(Cube World #22)

Includes...

A dungeon for your players to explore: the Temple of the Bastard Elves.

A guide to creating “typical” simple dungeons in Broceliande—that is, dungeons matching the kinds of ruins parties will most often run across, organized by the main architect cultures in the area (dwarves and goblins, plus humans and elves of the three known eras) and by who occupies the structure dungeon now. 

Points of interest in the Broceliandaise baronies, including Pont-L’évêque (populated mostly by elves and home to a powerful bishop), Livarot (a once-elven land now contested by the orc knights of Lord Draa) and Eese (a barony on the edge of the human Empire of the Hunger Kings, mostly wild). Plus a d100 table of wardogs.

7$ /10$ on OnlyFans

Those pictures up there are from...

Fortress On The Goblin Sea

(Cube World #21)

A big dungeon. Lots of art. 29 pages+

15$ /17$ on OnlyFans

In The Seething

(Cube World #20)

The area now known as The Seething exists at a nexus of ley lines high in the mountains. The atmosphere is sharp and strange, and an indelible electricity courses through every feature in the landscape. Its properties made of this implausible country an abode of great magi and of those who wish to peer past the panoply of green veils with which the modesty of nature enshrouds itself.

Such individuals notoriously prefer seclusion to liaison and soon fell to quarreling, intrigue, and mass murder. The Seething, while still, yet seethes, profoundly contaminated with the radiation of dweomers past.

But they say there’s treasure so, y’know, prolly worth a look.

This module contains three strange edifices left over from the time of the War Wizards--one now occupied by a mad sylph, one taken by the fearsome Panoptikhan and a still-functional automated outpost of hell known as the Demon Factory.

7$ /9$ on OnlyFans

Welcome To Gaxen Kane

(Cube World #19)

This is an intro module to Gaxen Kane, the empire of the goblins. A man or woman incarnates a passion, a dwarf is a drive, an elf incarnates a taste, a halfling is a good idea, a goblin is a bad one.

At the center of every goblin is a single bad idea: fear, treachery, folly, murder in the rushes, bad manners or something else.

(That's why even the compassionate, helpful ones are always stupid or insane.)

Sometimes a bad idea is the only idea:

Why not catch a pig and fill it with gas so you can float?

"This is a bad idea," a halfling would say.

"Do you have a better idea?" a goblin would say.

...and the halfling goes back to devising newer and more buttery cakes and the goblin sails over the mountain.

Includes different kinds of goblins, a map of Gaxen Kane, a big two-page spread intro adventure, random encounter tables and more.

10$ / 12$ on OnlyFans

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

(Cube World #18)

This module contains a variety of scenarios set all over Broceliande, a land imperiled as much by chivalry as by the sorceries of the native fae and their various descendants.

-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

A Legion, A Dimension, A Cave, A Tower

(Cube World #17)

...also: some new monsters and 20 new spells. A pack of self-contained adventures, all of which fit one one spread, one-page-dungeon-style, set all over the world:

Nassim's Legion Set in the Peacock Isles (India) featuring a sorcerer and his meth-addicted army of elephant riders.

Portal to Limbo A crazy-making complex encounter featuring limited light, a bottomless pit, an endless chain, and another dimension.

Death's Head Rock A straightforward wuxia-style scenario in the far east, where the party meets an NPC party and some giant snow mantises.

Fourm d'Amber Tower Three sorcerers, their nightgoats and their fearsome hydra occupy a tower that exists only by night

9 page pdf plus treasure table

5$ bucks / 7$ on OnlyFans

The Sorcerer, The Disintegrator, and The Giant Baboon

(Cube World 16)

Three simple scenarios that can be used as stand-alone adventures
or as elements to drop into a sandbox adventure. They are freestanding and require very little prep and don’t need to be embedded in any particular fantasy culture, mythos, or setting.

    -The Alien Sorcerer​ is a tough villain for mid-level parties who can can appear anywhere at             sea, a strange foe hidden beneath and artificial island.

    - ​Zy’Lik The Disintegrator​ dwells in a simple castle surrounded my minions nearly as powerful as he. He’s a good target for a high-level party who’ll scout out a location and devise a plan and he can appear in any isolated place where you might find a castle.

    -​Nyzadd and Qulwa​ are a good all-purpose target for parties in a desert setting who must be found in the trackless wastes before being engaged. Probably best for parties around 3-5 level.

These scenarios are meant to be easy to run right off the screen.

5$ / 7$ on OnlyFans

Some Semblance of Civilization 

(Cube World #15)

This module contains descriptions of five borderland areas nestled within the pleasant greeneries and strange wildernesses of Northern Broceliande:

-Leon, an elven duchy on the extreme northwest coast of Broceliande. Its capital, Aqable, sits on the edge of the Goblin Sea.

-Curé Nantais sits on the edge of the Freak Mountains, where the Grey Elves contend with the Freak Dwarves for dominion.

-Ortions, a human barony on the edge of elven territory named after its large city, which is in turn known for the quantity and quality of its scholars.

-Orlöc, on the border of the goblin kingdom of Gaxen Kane, is protected by an order of fearsome knights, and has never not been at war.

-Valençay, an elven crossroads on the edge of human territory, renowned worldwide for the quality of its perishable goods, and the trade they engender.

There are also two detailed scenarios set in Curé Nantais and Ortions--​The Inheritance​ and ​Bring Me The Head of Armando Torsedillas​. I’ve also thrown in some of the random tables for encounters and travels around Broceliande as well as the d1000 treasure table, which will be familiar to longtime readers from previous modules.

23 Page PDF plus reference and treasure tables
10$, 12$ on Onlyfans

Odd Jobs In Small Baronies

(Cube World 14)

A mini-sandbox setting, a little over a hundred miles across, a fine starting place or headquarters for exploring the Forest Sauvage. Legendary beasts, underwater ruins, elves living on cliffs, unicorns and unicorn-thieves, a land of hedge-mazes, the cult of the Ultravore, and more.

As of May 31, this project is a benefit because this.


10$ / 12$ on OnlyFans

The Philosophers

(Cube World #13)

This module concerns The Philosophers—a handful of related species from another dimension with an eerie power over the minds of terrestrial species. Specifically:

-The Neolarval Genesis Pits,​ a valley deep within the mountains where the Philosophers perform strange experiments and breed new selves.
-The Hyperlarvae of Triplet Velve,​ a set-up suitable for an urban social/investigation scenario where the party encounters some of the most bizarre outcomes of these experiments.
-Fortress of the Brain-Eaters,​ a simple ruin colonized by these creatures, riddled with traps, suitable for a skirmish or infiltration via stealth.
-Negazohedron of the Czarithid​, a dungeon adventure in the four-dimensional inner-sanctum of the Czarithid—the most powerful of Philosophers.

10$ / 12$ on OnlyFans

Four Islands

(Cube World #12)

Four Islands:

-Isle of Massive Crustaceans (and the evil sorcerer who loves them)

-Isle of the Lava Trolls (the floor is lava)

-Isle of Fifty Fingers (an Indian-flavored skirmish battle)

-Isle of the Spawn King (including a mutant-creature tribe generator)

5$, 6$ if you use OnlyFans

Nephilidia
(Cube World #11)

So decadent are the vampire lords of Nephilidia that they fear equally the sun, the sea, dry land, and, indeed any surface not hewn by an intelligent hand. Distinguishable from ordinary vampires by the gills on their necks and their glassy blue eyes, they prefer to travel via subterranean aqueducts, sewers, or other shallow, watertight, artificial constructions.

Most prefer never to leave their half-drowned empire of Nephilidia. Inside its tarnished palaces and rotting halls they sit--forever knee-deep in black and stagnant water, with strange algaes stretched like cobwebs from the surface to the once-ornate walls and crumbling statuary--endlessly elaborating cruel and languid intrigues, attended by naught but eyeless fish.

Nephilidia once had another name, and another before that, but now it is only Nephilidia—the sun’s weakened gleam silhouetting nothing but immense sea spiders and the scaffolds of illegible, unmoving machines rusting in snow and the enormous moon, in its turn, describing only the charcoaled surfaces of black-armored knights and the pale of their ghost-colored steeds.


This 23-page pdf includes a hexmap, random encounter tables for the sea, snow, and ruins, Nephilidian dungeon generator, map of the last palace, stats, items and lots more. 12$, 15$ if you use Onlyfans.

Red and Pleasant Miscellany 
(Cube World #10)

Snarks, bandersnatches, four-dimensional rooms, halfling pie locks, riding teacups through pools of mercury--I've done a lot with the world of Red & Pleasant Land since it was first published in 2014, here's the best of it...


5$ / 6$ if you use OnlyFans.

Eight Demon River, Lair of the Mantis, Wargenfels

(Cube World #9)

Three self-contained scenarios straight from the notebook.

-Eight Demon River requires the party to wade into the midst of a great naval battle on the titular river, in the Far East, against the fearsome wu-jen Leng Tch'e.

-Temple of the Mantis takes place in a bizarre, mazelike extradimensional space, where the players must evade or defeat strange mantis priests to secure the McGuffin. Lots of teleporting doors and an isometric map. 

-Wargenfels finds the party clinging to life on the back of a giant the size of a mountain

5$. 6 if you use OnlyFans.

The Tracery, Lair of the She-Jackal and Graphic Dungeon Generator
(Cube World #8)

This pdf has three dungeon things...

The Tracery​—a unique area of interlinking walkways that can go inside a larger dungeon, and act as a “switching station” between other levels.

Dungeon Generator​—A tool for quickly putting together a medium-sized dungeon, ideal for lonely places that have been abandoned and then taken over by monsters.


Lair of the She Jackal​—A medium-sized dungeon made using the Dungeon Generator featuring weird magic, lava babies, and lots of scorpions.


It's 5$. 6$ on OnlyFans since there's a service charge.

The Three Dangers of Eeping

(Cube World #7)

This installment contains three scenarios for players who like a challenge:

-The Deep Trap is hard because it requires a very careful search to find the treasure

-The Labyrinth of the Basilisk is hard because it is very deadly

-The Old Empire is hard because both

Characters setting out to deal with these scenarios should be told “it’s very, very, difficult”. If you don’t, they will get mad at you.

Also includes the d1000 Random Treasure Table and all its books and items from Cube World #3

This one has a lot of art to it, so it's 7$. Email me -- zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm -- to use a payment ap or bank transfer.

If you can't just make a custom pledge to my patreon equal to the amount you're paying and don't renew next month.  It's 8$ if you use onlyfans since they have a service charge.

The Siege of Ortheque

(Cube World #6)

This adventure has three different parts:

-In the first part the party discovers that the port town of Ortheque, in the region of Teeming, has been blockaded and taken over by a chaos warband. The party is given the opportunity to plan an assault and liberate the town. Unaltered, it’s suitable for a mid-level party and has a player's handout they can use to scout it out, plus a GM cheat sheet to make it easy to run.

-When and if the party succeeds, the scenario opens up: all kinds of NPCs are excited to ask the heroes for help doing things they were going to do before the blockade both in Ortheque and in the larger town of AuNord on the other side of the region.

-There are a few things to do in and around Teeming, including a small dungeon, and a random dungeon generator. 5$

Warbox: Broceliande
(Cube World #5)

Broceliande is lovely and green, with tall castles, jousts, quests, wild forests, foxes, frogs and fae, elves in the north, halflings in the south, dwarves in mountains, the stylish and pleasure-loving empire of the Hunger Kings along the east coast and the staid and comfort-fond kingdom of Annwn nearby.

Unfortunately, its closest neighbor is Gaxen Kane, the horrible Goblin Empire, with which the various nations of Broceliande have been at war on-and-off since the earth first formed from the stone that the twelve medusa sisters turned the primordial demons into. This installment is just about the wartorn northern reaches of Broceliande, where the gray elves and goblins contend much as they have for many lifetimes of men.

This is a 10-page sandbox module with about 50 locations, a random town generator, random encounters and D20 illustrated places in which to set them. Lots of pictures. 5$.

Iguana Isle, The Megacorpse, Tower of the Octophant and Drownesia
(Cube World #4)

This four-pack of one-page (ish) places and situations is all about sailing and exploration. The first is a pirate fortress where PCs can try to blend in or just take over, the others are set in Drownesia (or Southeast Asia)--investigating the body of a god being picked at by pterodactyls, an elephant-headed ogre, and a Drownesian princess bride in need of foreigners rescuing from her dinosaur-riding groom.

Includes a 7 page pdf plus a simple map for players to use and a lots of pictures, including the fully-illustrated way-too-much-effort two-page spread "cheat sheet" I use at home for Isle of the Octophant (previewed above). 

$5.00.

The Curated Destruction

(Cube World #3)

Each room of the library consists of one or more hexagonal galleries lined with shelves, with each gallery possessing a second balcony-level held aloft by wooden columns (reached by an immensely tasteful winding staircase in the southeast corner of each room), all executed in the warm and scholarly middle-fae style of southern Broceliande during the Second War. Unless otherwise noted (or flooded past 10’), each is lit by six torches in sconces set along each column. If extinguished the torches will be re-lit the next time the party returns.

It is the Curated Destruction, a semi-legendary library created by the elves to contain all useful knowledge and literary art. The hexagonal shape of the libraries’ galleries derives from the shaft libraries of the ancient serpentmen, the name derives from the method the elves employed to make these collections their own: since the serpentine libraries reportedly contained all possible literary works (all masterpieces, all possible inaccurate plagiarisms of these masterpieces, all accurate predictions, all false ones, texts containing only the letters xvi over and over, utter gibberish, this module, etc) the elves compiled their vast libraries by looting the shaft libraries and destroying every meaningless work.

The party has just found every book they could ever want…in among a practical infinity of ones they don’t.

This is a mammoth installment: 36 pages plus the map. The library-dungeon and all its sections, plus 100 rare books, over a hundred new items and the entire rest of a d1000 all-purpose dungeon treasure table. Plus a table of useless (?) books the PCs pull off the shelves

$10.00

The Inquisitor's Road, The Gray Fortress, The Echo Chambers (plus d100 potions with ingredients) (Cube World #2)

Every dungeon needs quiet spots, where there are strange things to see and strange choices to make in the dark. A switching-post between the more intense areas--this is what The Echo Chambers are for. They can also just be a fun place to chase an enemy through--like when the spooky music kicks in at Bowser's castle.

I put together an adventure in three parts leading down into them: in the first scenario, the party heads through the wilderness to investigate a heresy at the behest of religious authorities, in the second section the party encounters the cult of the White-Lipped Goddess in a once-abandoned fortress, and the third section is this dungeon.

Each section leads into the next but there are other ways to run them—you could place a treasure at the end of the first or second section and have complete scenario, and you can place enemies from the section section in the Echo Chambers and have a diverting one or two-session dungeon crawl.

Either way, this installment of Cube World should give you at least six hours of play, and likely much more. It also includes a d100 random potion table along with a list of the exotic ingredients necessary to make each potion because I had a monster that was carrying random potions...

It's an 11-page pdf plus a map. $5.00.

Castle Terravante, Vault of Omnilex, and Crypt of the Wretched

(Cube World #1)

It's a couple of linked scenarios (detachable from each other) a social-interaction clusterfuck involve shenanigans in a castle (a duke, a count, a scheming priest, a dark secret etc) and the rest about the dungeon beneath. It runs to 10 pages plus a map and I've run it as part of the beginning of a megadungeon and as a one-shot in its own right--it works either way. So far Kimberly's lost a warpig and all the fingers on one hand. Stats are for any old-school D&Dlike, but it's easy to convert.

$5.00

Tiger King Dungeon

Exotic animals, competing factions, controlled substances, murder-for-hire, mutilation...the DM who asked me to write her a Tiger King-themed adventure didn't know what she was getting into.

It ran to ten or eleven pages including old-school D&D-style stats (she requested Lamentations of the Flame Princess, so they're technically that), a full-color illustrated dungeon map in addition to the island sketch above.

$5.00

Other releases...

Frostbitten & Mutilated

Maze of the Blue Medusa

Red & Pleasant Land

and

Vornheim: The Complete City Kit

If you're having trouble getting these pdfs or have any questions about where the money goes when you buy them, email me.

Art Stuff...

Posters, prints, pillows, shirts, phone cases...here

How to Order:

If you have payment aps, email zakzsmith at hawtmayle dawt calm and I'll send you the stuff. If you don't (often a problem outside the US) then you can email me about using transferwise or donate the appropriate amount of money to my patreon using the "custom pledge" button and email me to let me know which things you want.

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