Mounted on a Pin (Aclas Dungeon)

The central dungeon of Those Fragile Bridges, my funnel hexcrawl for Locheil's Aclas.

The Panopticon is shaped like its namesake - a 3-floor tower of 30 foot high rooms, each open to a central pillar and its arcflash-white spotlight.

There are no random encounters; the Mystic would not permit loose variables in his home. Instead, each exploration turn the spotlight clicks one segment clockwise - starting at 2/5/8, then 3/6/9, and so on.

If the spotlight sees the PCs (which is different than "passing through the room they are in" - there is a chance to hide), it flashes red. Puyinthel notices you. He reaches out with telekinetic hands to drag a PC into room 10 for interrogation. The rest take 1d8 damage per round as the light burns them away into nothing.

This spotlight is a real, physical object, and can be destroyed. If it is, Puyinthel leaves 10 to hunt the saboteurs. The spotlight does not notice those under the influence of the killing-chalice from hex C1. 

Each room connects to each other on its floor, with the exceptions of 8 and 10. The staircase between the first two floors is from 3-6, then the next from 5-8. There is an unlocked door into room 1, and a barred window into room 6.

1. Tribute Room

The only place in the Panopticon open to others - an altar for the people of the island to leave food, water, and gifts for Puyinthel.

2. Ankle Cutter

Seams run across the bottom of this room's outer wall, and a holographic two-dimensional eye floats in the center of it. If the eye sees you (it cannot be destroyed, but can be blinded with sand and so on) pass through this room, curved blades snap out from the seams, aiming for hamstrings (1d8 damage, immobilizing you on a 6+), and the eye laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs as the Gargoyle comes.

3. Gargoyle - Stairs

A statue of a bearded man dredged up from the depths, its cracks filled with gold. Its head ends above the lower jaw, a flat ruby shaped like <0> hovering where it would have been. 4 HD, 14 AC, takes only one damage from things not meant to break stones, slow, knocks you prone with a slap for +2 1d8 or stomps on the prone for +4 2d10.

The Gargoyle sees only through the ruby, which can be plucked from its head (worth 200gp - the gold in the statue is worth another 100). If Puyinthel dies, it shuts down (the intact Gargoyle, sold as an art piece, is worth 1000). 

It sits on the floor like a reprimanded child, still except for the ruby spinning like a radar dish. Next to it, stairs lead up to room 6.

4. Serpent's Egg

This room has no doors in or out, only thin plaster walls. Behind them is an empty, dusty room, with a soft golden egg laid haphazardly on the floor.

If brought to the sea serpent in hex A2, it will do anything for you in return, even if it spells its own death. If heated in a forge, it will hatch into a newborn sea serpent.

5. Lockbox - Stairs

A heavy safe with jewelry (750 gp) stolen from Puyinthel's guests or manifested from nothing. It has no key - Puyinthel locks and unlocks it with his Crown when he needs to pay his Pursuers. As such, the keyhole has been filled with lead.

6. Window

The outer wall here is barred, instead of solid. Small and agile PCs could sidle in through it. On the inside, it is covered in a sheet of paper with the barest beginnings of some convoluted design painted in ink on its bottom-left corner.

7. The Error

Kept where Puyinthel can see it. A haunting spirit, something like a tree, something like a worm, colored perfectly flat grey like a missing texture. The Mystic has stuck it to the wall with nail after nail after nail. It bleeds a sheenless black.

He made a mistake, when he was younger and more foolish. He let it in. It has a parasite-Crown drawn from Puyinthel, under the inverse focus Loneliness. This Crown overrides Puyinthel's - it is immune to all of his effects, but he is not immune to its.

Anyone touching it disappears as long as they are doing so - and cannot see anyone else as long as they are under this effect. 

The Error exists only to kill Puyinthel, but is also mindlessly, obviously hostile to all other humans. It has an effective 2 HD and 10 AC (and grinds for 1d8 damage at +2 to-hit with its radula), but as long as the Mystic lives it will return from death, crawling out of the earth miles away.

8. Collage

The inner wall of this room is covered in hanging paintings - amateurish portraits and landscapes and delirious abstracts, many half-finished. They are layered - take a canvas down and find another beneath it. Take it too and reveal another image, painted directly onto the wall. 

9. Prisoner

This room has no doors in or out, only thick stone walls. 

A room empty apart from painting supplies and a jug of water, home to the weaver Jarde. He has spent weeks here, Puyinthel coming daily to ask questions. How did you feel when you were born? Please, draw an image of yourself. What day do you think it is? What is your favorite color? 

Jarde is unharmed. Not even shackled - where would he go, except down a 60 foot drop? When Puyinthel bores of his answers, he will be hurled from the Panopticon to break on the stones of the Graveyard (hex B1). 

10. The Pupil

There is no path to the center of the eye. 3 doorways stare out in each direction, but there are no bridges. Jump.

When you do, you reach a massive domed room, dominated by a raised-relief map of the island. If you look closely, you can see tiny figures walk across it - and tiny figures standing in the Panopticon, looking closely at a raised-relief map of the island. The map updates automatically to show the nearest seven hexes.

If you have escaped Puyinthel's notice, he is here, absentmindedly painting a figure for the castaway Siwatu Amaechi.

Puyinthel has 10 HP, and is unarmored, though he carries a finely-made cane-sword (+1, 1d6, worth 350 gp) to protect himself from the Error. His Crown is a 10 meter (30 foot) radius marked out around him in staring holographic eyes. Within this radius he has complete control of reality. He could do whatever he wishes - his favorite options are

a) to annihilate you, layer by minuscule layer like an MRI scan, so every particle of you can be viewed and known.

b) to replace you, first disintegrating your brain and then constructing a new one with a set of forged experiences that make you fully loyal to Puyinthel.

On his turn, he can do either of these to one person inside his Crown. Neither provides a save.

 

For G L Å U G U S T 2 0 2 5 - prompt 3:1 "wizard tower dungeon (must have a gimmick) OR train dungeon (NOT too linear)" 

Those Fragile Bridges (Aclas Hexcrawl)

Far in the south of Aclas, in the Yaladine archipelago, is an island, and a looming tower. Sailors call it the Lure - they say it glows at night, and is the home of misshapen beasts and a cult who wishes to flood the world - so they keep their distance.

It is, in truth, a prison, or a toybox. Domain of the Mystic who calls himself Puyinthel - mystic of the focus Control. From his tower he watches you dance, and he calls you his. Escape attempts are untenable as long as he lives - from miles away he looks down, reading thoughts and breaking necks.

Your parents lived and died on this island. You don't plan to do the same.

Random Encounters

2. The mystic's attention - he checks a snapshot of your fears, emotional state, and obsessions (as Insight) for anything out of the ordinary. The hair on the back of your neck rises.

3. 2d4 Pursuers (1 HD, shields, swords, shortbows) - Puyinthel's guards and killers, armed with figments of his imagination. Barbed arrows damage you again each time you move between hexes - but they'll catch you if you slow. If you roll an 8, this is the full set of Pursuers and includes Inga.

4. A cow-sized nudibranch (stats as carrion crawler) festooned with Sithican decorations in verdigrised bronze.

5. A recurring NPC - if the players have met no one, a fisher from Home out on a pleasant walk :)

6. 1d6 predatory lungfish (1 HD, slow movement, ambush predators, bite +1 1d6) drag themselves out from the damp earth.

7. Siwatu Amaechi, a hapless soldier (2 HD, big spear, real armor) from some island or another, now washed up on the Lure. 

8. The Ghost.

Hex Keys

A1: Home

A fishing village of a couple hundred - with no boats. Its residents dive, or fish with spears, but never further from shore than they can swim.  

Well, almost no boats - Puyinthel's eight Pursuers live in a long hall, and keep one among them to hunt for those desperate few who try to swim. Their foreign captain (and Duelist A, with the Vom Tag technique of her former Ossean training), Inga, tires of this post - Puyinthel provides them little for their loyalty. She is, in a way, just as much a captive as you. If you hunted down the deserter in C2, this would be enough to turn her towards you, and away from the Mystic.

A2: Sea Serpent

A great snake made of gold writhes offshore - it has been dying, bleeding glowing ichor into the sea, for decades. Ever since Puyinthel struck it down.

Serpentists see this as an extremely heavy-handed and not particularly positive omen - and for more materialist PCs, the dying snake means anyone swimming or sailing through this region has a 4-in-6 chance to be crushed, drowned, reduced to splinters, et cetera. 

Its blood ignites like gasoline. Its hatred of Puyinthel burns like the sun.

B1: Graveyard

Where the Mystic leaves broken toys. Sometimes, whether he doesn't trust them or because he's just bored, someone from Home gets an invitation to his tower - and when he's tired of them, they find themselves thrown, bodily, to the west to shatter on the ground.

These people are only buried at night, when the villagers think the Mystic isn't looking. 

And during these nights, and their vigils, a ghost stalks the graveyard. It tears at its own grave, howls at the rising sun, howls at the Panopticon, screams and screams and screams and screams its childrens' names and its parents' names and then, in the middle of a syllable, falls silent.

If it were given someone to possess, it could think. And it could take revenge. It knows this - and it screams this, in those moments when it is conscious enough to communicate.

B2: Panopticon

The pillar of the tyrant, manifestation of Control. 

B3: Shipwreck

Once the pirate ship Never Seen This Man In My Life, Officer - now, a ruin, scythed apart by coral and stones. Inside is a sole survivor, mind fizzing from exposure to Puyinthel, maddened by the belief that he is that mystic.

On his hip is an immense break-action pistol (1d8+4 damage, ignores armor, two-handed) - four brass cartridges jangle in his pouch, and a fifth is loaded.

C1: Sithican Temple

A buried ruin, carved with angular squid. Its half-sunken, gateless door is just large enough for you to crawl through, into a claustrophobic tunnel flooded with sticking, drowning mud.

Past this, the temple opens - a dark room, filled up to your knees in silty water. Rolling in it, desperate to stop itself from asphyxiating, is a multicolored cow-sized sea slug (stats as carrion crawler). 

Behind the nudibranch, on a mud-covered stone plinth, is a pearlescent chalice of piercingly blue water. Those who sip from it feel as if they are drowning, and then "die", for three hours - they still move, and speak, and think, but according to spells, spirits, anyone you ask, and mind-reading, there is nothing here but a corpse. There are six doses.

C2: Deserter's Camp

Surrounded by noisemakers on strings. In the center, Matvei fails to sleep. He fled from the Pursuers out of conscience - unable to bear any more time acting as the Mystic's boot.

Inga will execute him if he is captured - she has a reputation to uphold. 

For G L Å U G U S T 2 0 2 5 - prompt 5:1 "Tiny regional hexcrawl" 

Best Case Scenario Mission - INTERSECT BINARY WAVES [O-E]

Player Intro

A dozen unstable psychics, recovered from the ruins of the Center for Coordination [see archival documents SECOND HAND CLOCK/PIKES GATHER SUNFLOWERS/SYNTHETIC TOMORROWS AWAIT] must be delivered, alive, to a holding/burial facility in Denver, Colorado, operating beneath HealthOne Mountain Ridge.

Two armored vans have been provided - van 1 holds 4 telekinetic, 2 intrusively-telepathic, and 2 energetic/pyrokinetic subjects. These eight are sedated - however, due to the increased metabolism of psychic subjects, they are expected to awaken immediately if sedative injection is interrupted. IV glucose has also been provided, to ensure none of them starve during delivery. Foil helmet-inserts have also been provided, to dampen telepathic interference.

Van 2 contains four biofeedback-specialized psychics. These subjects cannot be sedated due to their immunity to medicines and poisons, and are thus only physically restrained.

Your drive goes just fine, up until you notice the garbage truck flying down a side road at 60 miles an hour…

The Ambush

    Garbage truck “A” - stops side-on in the middle of Pearl St. in an attempt to block the frontmost of the agents’ vans. Assuming all goes well, 2 occupants (soft-armored and rifle-armed driver and front-seat passenger) throw smoke grenades over van 1, then approach while a pair of hard-armored LMG soldiers hop out the back and keep the vans under suppression. The riflemen then cut through the back door with torches and start pulling out psychics’ sedative IVs. Early warning or really sick driving may let van 1 avoid this trap - thus its superposition on the map.

    Garbage truck “B” - flies up the street at 60 and gladly impacts van 2, assuming the biofeedback-specialists will survive. Another team of 4, all soft-armored shotgunners, move to open it. 

Psychic Statistics

All are as average humans except otherwise stated. Psychic Potential rolls are on 1d6 - the result is both the [sum] of the psychic ability (as GLOG spells) and treated as an Attack against the psychic using it. Effects of wounds and death from these attacks occur after the psychic ability is resolved.

Telekinetics can make a Psychic Potential roll to throw [sum]*200 pounds of matter at 30 miles an hour. Assume agents weigh 200 pounds, and cars 3000. Telekinetics can cooperate to lift weights equal to the total of their rolls. Throwing an agent is an attack, as is throwing an agent-sized object at an agent. Dropping a car on someone kills them instantly.

Telepaths take over [sum] people for a [sum] minute duration. As long as they’re wearing helmets, pawns are only assaulted with whispers and shifting shadows in the corners of their eyes. Civilians have no such protections.

Pyrokinetics set [sum] people or objects On Fire. Agents who are On Fire are attacked every turn until they do something about it. When an agent dies of being on fire, if they had any grenades in their inventory they detonate from overheating.

Biofeedback turns psychic potential inside-out, into the body. For [sum/2] rounds their speed and jump distance is tripled, they can run on walls, and they can make two attacks a round (even unarmed, biofeedback specialists can attack without penalty). For this duration, the specialist is immune to injury and death - on a 6, their head may explode, but they won’t stop moving until time runs out. If you miss, it’s because they caught the bullet.

A/B/C (Shotgun Scenario)

A man is dead. Twice.

The police found body "Alpha" under an overpass, beaten and covered in garbage bags. No identification, no clothes, no importance; the police decided he was homeless and deprioritized the investigation.

At 8:04 AM the next day, "Beta" was shot in the throat from a third-story window. He looks identical to "Alpha", down to fingerprints and scars; 5'10", 130 pounds, black hair, thin face. By the time the police arrived, the shooter was gone.

The police have been delayed. Their investigation has been stopped, and Beta's possessions have been preserved.

This is now your problem. Catch the killer, and identify the copies, if any more exist.

 GM Information

The Doppelgangers

There are, or were, a total of 6 copies. Alpha and Beta are both dead; "Gamma", "Delta", "Epsilon", and "Zeta" still live. Only Zeta was meant to be released. He plans to kill the rest, and has persuaded Beta and Gamma to help him. The rest of the doppelgangers are going to ground, trying to build identities and relationships - making sure someone would notice if they disappeared, and hoping that will protect them from Zeta.

Alpha was desperate to find a cover as a human. He knew Zeta was after him and he was running out of time, so he tried to kill Epsilon and replace him. He got himself killed instead.

Beta was one of Zeta's agents. He avoided working - hoping that as long as there were others to kill, Zeta would leave him alone. He was wrong. Zeta got tired of his unreliability, and sent Gamma to put a bullet in him.

Gamma is Zeta's more active agent. He killed Beta with his own rifle, and now he's working down the rest of the list. He is unsubtle, and not above public violence. He always carries a pistol. He knows Zeta plans to betray him when the job is done.

Delta is a hermit - he's known someone's after him ever since Beta took a shot and missed, but he doesn't know who. His implanted memories are strong - he is entirely under the impression he is a real person, and has no idea there are any others.

Epsilon is hiding in plain sight. He lives in a perfectly normal house, with a perfectly normal girlfriend who thinks he's a perfectly normal human being. He killed Alpha in self-defense, and he'll kill again if he has to. He is also injured - nobody gets out of a knife fight clean.

Zeta is the first of the doppelgangers, the only one meant to exist. Everyone else is an error, not meant to be released. He's coerced Gamma (and, previously, Beta) to kill the rest. Then he'll kill Gamma himself, and vanish, secure in the knowledge he is the only one.

They were released in inverse order - Zeta first, then Epsilon, and so on, with Alpha the most recent. Except for Delta, all of their memories start with them waking up out in a forest. None of them know where this is. None of them know why.

Each and every one of them is a fake. Under layers of false skin and flesh, they are filled with wet gravel and foam insulation.

Timeline

- "Day -1", Alpha is killed by Epsilon. Beta attempts to kill Delta, and fails.

- "Day 0", Beta is killed by Gamma. Gamma is reassigned onto Beta.

- "Day 1", October 12th, the players are brought onto the investigation.

- "Day 2", Gamma kills Delta.

- "Day 3", Gamma and Zeta meet at the diner.

- "Day 4", Gamma takes a shot at Epsilon while he's at home, and fails. The police are called. Gamma runs.

- "Day 5", Gamma tries again and succeeds. No survivors.

- "Day 6", Gamma and Zeta meet. Gamma is killed. Zeta vanishes.

Locations

Alpha's Murder Scene

Among the trash and ignored by the first round of crime scene investigators is a bloodied metal pipe, covered in wads of foam insulation. The fingerprints on it match any one of the doppelgangers. 

There are also Alpha's clothes and a journal - Alpha's information on Epsilon. Pictures of his house, pictures of his family, scripts recording the way he talks and the things he wants, all so Alpha can replace him.

There's also still a trail of blood leading away - the murderer must not have gotten away unharmed. It leads to a drug store where the workers will readily admit someone matching the description of a doppelganger came in, bleeding, and then took a taxi out east. This was Epsilon, returning to his house.

Beta's Body

Beta is shabbily dressed, and uninjured except for a bullet hole through the throat. His pockets contain the keys to his apartment, a pocket knife, and a wallet with $12.03, a driver's license under the name Johan Reading, and a picture of Delta's windowless basement apartment. On the back of the picture is "Amnesiac. By the the 28th. 610 East 35th St." - that date is two weeks ago. Beta was meant to kill Delta by now, but simply hasn't.

Beta's Apartment

Gamma shot Beta from their own apartment, after getting an extra key from Beta's landlord (who will say that "Johan" was in his apartment at the time Beta was shot). The day of the shooting, Gamma arrived in his van (bright yellow, license plate COE-3881 - tenants and the landlord can give a decent description).

The apartment itself is a wreck, trampled over by a crowd of tenants and cops. There are no signs of forced entry (Gamma used the key). A telescope tripod still stands by the single window.

On the desk is a letter. You didn't show last week. I'm tired of this. Do your fucking job.

Next to it is a map with three spots marked and dated - one last month, one last week, and a diner in two days.

At the bottom of a bathroom trash can are a set of notes on Beta, made by Gamma - his routines (home, then work at a local car wash, then home, shopping once a week), his acquaintances (none), his equipment (an AR-15 in .308 - the gun that killed him).

Gamma's Van

A boxy panel van in aggressive bright yellow. Through Day 1 and Day 2, it is parked with a clean line of sight to Delta's apartment, waiting. All the doors are locked.

There are a few holes in the walls for him to fire his new rifle through. He will take this opportunity.

Inside is a checklist: Latecomer (how?). Brother. Amnesiac. Family Man. Management. (this is every other doppelganger in alphabetical order - Gamma's kill list),  

- Beta's rifle

- another copy of the meeting-map in Beta's apartment, 

- a sleeping bag, and a few newspapers. And, of course, Gamma.

There's a camera pointing through one of the holes at Delta's apartment door. He will see the players if they go there.

On Day 3, it goes to the diner. Then, to Epsilon's house on Day 4, an alleyway after the attack fails, and back to Epsilon's house on Day 5. Finally, on Day 6, it sits in front of the diner, where it will stay. Permanently.

Delta's Bolthole 

A basement apartment, accessed from a staircase outside. The door is barred and locked. There are no windows. Delta hasn't left since Beta tried to kill him, but now he's starting to run out of food.

He has no idea what's going on. To his memory, he is David Gardner, who had a nice responsible banking job until someone tried to shoot him. These memories are false.

On Day 2 he runs out of food, and opens the door. Gamma is waiting for him. He'll see the players if they appear, too.

Epsilon's House

Epsilon (under the name Herb Olsen) lives in a one-story house in the suburbs with his girlfriend, Jane Danner. He will not react well to the PCs appearing and asking questions, assuming they've found out he killed Alpha. Jane knows absolutely nothing - she's been in a relationship with Epsilon for six months and hasn't noticed anything about killer doppelgangers.

On day 4, Gamma will park his van atop a nearby hill and then start shooting through the windows, wounding Jane. When the police are called, he flees. The next day Gamma returns and kills them both.

The Diner

Gamma and Zeta meet here twice. It is wide open, surrounded by windows, and brightly lit.

The first meeting is in the afternoon of Day 3, when the diner is crammed. They talk (about music, mourning Beta [who they each call "our brother"], about Delta [who they just call "him"]) for 14 minutes over coffee, then split up - Gamma returns to his van and drives out into an alley to wait, while Zeta ambles to a car and drives out to a completely empty hotel room. There isn't even any furniture. He just sits on the floor for a day.

The second meeting is late at night on day 6. Zeta arrives first, and when Gamma sits down, Zeta immediately shoots him, then runs. He doesn't stop driving until the sun rises.

Damned Old House - an Adventure for 1 Wandering Exorcist

Introduction

Duet games are very interesting to me - I like the idea of something you can play with only 1 PC and a GM. They're easy to organize, they go quickly, and they're better at creating an atmosphere.

I'm also very interested in the Sword Exorcist class - an investigator who has to determine the cause of a ghost's death and the things attaching it to the world of the living in order to fight it effectively. However, I've always thought it was kind of difficult to use in a standard OSR game, because of how different their goals are when compared to more standard classes, and how rarely their abilities will get to be used

But, neither of those problems exist when you make a game built around the Sword Exorcist. One where ghost investigations are the entire game, and where all (or at least most) of your enemies will be ghosts.

So, I combined those two interests into this combination game and module. The setting is ambiguously 1800s-ish; factories spring up in towns, Parliament has replaced the kings of old, and new ideas about what a nation is fuel equally new wars between them. But even with these new advancements, old ghosts aren't going away.

(oh yeah also the other influence on this, and the source of the name, is this Russian pop-punk song from the 2000s i found on the internet somehow. don't ask questions)

The Exorcist

An Exorcist uses the stats from your preferred OSR game, but has no class. Instead, they have a particular set of starting equipment and abilities. All Exorcists bear a sword in a wooden scabbard, bound with silver. It cannot be drawn unless particular preparations are made, but even sheathed it deals 1d4 damage, even to ghosts.

They have also been trained to have a second sight. While a ghost may rarely appear to others, it is always seen clearly by the Exorcist.

Exorcists will also bring other, more specialized equipment - any two entries from this list can be chosen by the Exorcist at any point while they are in town. It is generally best to not choose all your items until your investigation is complete, to ensure you have the right tools.

1. 4 paper warding marks. When one is placed on a wall or floor, the passage of a ghost will cause it to burn with a cold white flame which you can see through walls with your second sight. 

2. 3 rations worth of hard dried bread and salted meat paste.

3. Six candles. Five are normal, but the sixth (with ink designs covering it, and a wick of human hair and foul-smelling oil) will reveal invisible things touched by its light, and let you see through thin walls, into closed chests, and otherwise through obstacles.

4. A hand crossbow, with six silver-tipped darts. This deals 1d6 damage to people, and some ghosts are weak to silver, due to its antibiotic properties.

5. A one-handed hammer, for knocking holes in walls, smashing windows, and generally causing problems.

6. A grey silk shroud. If the corpse a ghost is connected to is found and shrouded, the ghost's HD is halved.

To draw your sword, you must know three things:

1. The Form - how does the ghost manifest? What does it do?

2. The Truth - how did the ghost die? Who was involved?

3. The Reason - why does the ghost still hang on? What does it want?

When your sword is drawn, the targeted ghost is unable to flee - it must stand and fight. The sword glows unnaturally, deals 10 damage with each strike, and has Advantage on to-hit rolls if your system uses them.

from Mononoke, the original basis for the Sword Exorcist

Damned Old House

GM Introduction

Decades ago, an old man lived in a house on the edge of a small village. The man's name is forgotten - the village's name is irrelevant. As old men do, he eventually died.

The people of the town feared and distrusted him - they said he was a thief, a con, and a killer. When a sheep died or a child fell ill, people's eyes turned to his home.

When he passed, the town got together, beat his corpse, hid it in a wall, and bricked up his house. Now, his spirit wanders, tearing at the boards across the windows and the bricks laid in the doorways. The villagers keep their distance - the truth has been forgotten, now all that survives are tales of the Damned Old House.

The Form: the ghost manifests as an old man, and devours light and food

The Truth: the ghost died of starvation and disease because it was unable to buy food or fuel

The Reason: the community bricked up the house and the corpse instead of burying it (note that this does not mean any unburied corpse will create a ghost - people spent more effort boarding up the house than it would've taken to bury the body. this insult is the cause)

The Exorcist has to answer these questions correctly, but not in detail - "the ghost looks like an old man", "starved" and "was abandoned" still count, because they're correct.

Player Introduction

You arrive in a small town, on the edge of a forest. A ruined, ancient house on the edge of town is seething with energy through your second sight. A ghost is here - an old, raging one.

Next to the damned old house is a smaller, two-story home in good condition, and more homes start to show up as you get closer and closer to the town square. Around the square is a small stone church with a narrow graveyard, a few more homes, and a squat building with a sign reading "Licensed by Parliament for distribution - Year 492" over a picture of a blue-striped shield with a dog's head. All the way on the other side of town from the haunted house is a large brick factory with a single red-painted smokestack.

NPCs and Stories

The house closest to the ghost's residence is owned by the Timur family: Sonia, her husband Yevgeny, and their six year old son Maksim. Sonia and Yevgeny will both say they've seen the ghost appear on cloudy days, and that it bites at the boards nailed to the windows until the sun returns. (Clue: the ghost is afraid of light.)

If asked about the origin of the ghost, they will both say that they both listened to the local priest, Father Baksin, who often discusses the ghost's past. They say the ghost was a sinful, avaricious man, who was so attached to his money that he rose from the dead to count it, over and over, forever.

Maksim will tell a different story he had heard from a friend; the old man killed himself by accident, in an explosion while trying to make a potion that would let him become young. That's why he's afraid of fire. If asked to prove this, Maksim will talk about how he lit a candle in his room, and when the ghost looked through his window the candle went out, instantly.

Yevgeny will also talk about one of the people he used to work with at the factory, Vasily. He says Vasily went, along with many others, to destroy the ghost. They fought valiantly, planning to burn down the house and destroy the old man's body, but they were repelled - Vasily nearly died, and a few others did. Now he's retired, and spends most of his time in the local bar, when he isn't on vacation.

Father Baksin works in a small church, in the center of town. His version of his story is slightly different than the Timurs', saying the old man was named Hikmat Salil, and that his body was buried in the town's graveyard when he died, though that was before Father Baksin started to work at this church. He says that the man was greedy, but that was not his real sin. He was a prospector, and his money came from a miraculous discovery of gold he found with his brother. When the mine caved in, Feodor gathered the food they had brought, and kept it all for himself. By the time he got out, his brother had starved. Now, the ghost is starving, gnawing at the walls of the house to try and feed itself.

He will also offer to let you enter the church's library, which includes most of the town's old news and other documents. With a day of searching the library, you can find the journal of the last priest, who ran the church when the man died. In his journal, he describes "the old man who lives in the house on the edge of town" constantly - saying the community blames him for ill children, dead livestock, and even bad weather. 

One entry, dated around the time of the old man's death, says that when he went to his house to collect his body, it had already been bricked up. He says he has sent a letter to a nearby city asking for an Exorcist - he worries this poor treatment may cause problems in the future.

In the church's graveyard, there is a grave for a Hikmat Salil, who died decades ago, around the correct time. There is another grave for his wife, Atiya, that has no date of death written - she is still alive.

If she is found, she says her husband and her had recently moved to the town when Hikmat fell ill and died. He had never lived in that cursed old house, he definitely wasn't some kind of evil alchemist, and for God's sake he died in his thirties. 

She tells the same story that Yevgeny did, about the last time the town tried to deal with the ghost. However, her version is less flattering - according to Atiya, the angry mob ransacked her house first, saying it was her husband who haunted the house, and that it was her fault somehow. Then, they went to the old man's house and when they came back out, one of them was dead of a terrible wound. She says that she bets the idiot got separated, and someone stabbed him thinking he was a ghost. A few others came out with bite wounds - the ghost, she guesses. She remembers a man named Vasily who led them into her house - she tries to avoid him, now.

Vasily is a cheerful old man, scarred both by the ghost's attacks and his time in the War, which he gladly tells increasingly unlikely stories about. Hearing him say it, no one on his side ever actually died, and the War was a constant roller coaster of exhilarating action and romance. 

He takes a similar tone talking about the ghost - talking about how he personally decapitated the old man's corpse with an axe, and built a great bonfire in the house's common room to burn the place to the ground. And yet, no matter how much wood they piled on to the fire, it barely grew, and whenever they stopped for even a moment, it began to shrink.

Vasily also talks about a woman named Atiya, saying she was really responsible for the ghost - it was her husband, and when he inherited great riches from his dying father, Atiya poisoned him to take it all for herself. But the evil of her act cursed the money, which melted into the ground and vanished. Out of rage, Atiya shackled her husband's spirit to the house, so he could never reach the afterlife. Vasily says he'd gladly kill the witch if he could, but he's afraid of facing her himself.

The Damned Old House

Random Events & Encounters

1. The ghost is frightened by light - if the Exorcist has a candle, torch, or other tool, the ghost puts it out.

2. The ghost is starving - if the Exorcist has food, 1 ration-worth of it vanishes. If they don't, they feel a sudden bite on their shoulder, and take 1d4 damage.

3. The ghost tears at a window in a random room, trying to pull the boards off of it. If the sun is out, the ghost takes 1 damage. No matter what, the window is now open.

4. The ghost weeps audibly. The Exorcist can hear what direction the ghost is from them.

5. The ghost panics, and moves across two rooms this turn.

6. The house creaks and shudders, but nothing happens.

The ghost starts in room 11, and moves one room per exploration turn at random. It will move into rooms with the Exorcist, but will try to flee when damaged.

Room Key

1. Foyer. Dust hangs in the air and covers the ground, along with a few broken clubs and rusted knives from the last attempted exorcism.

2. Living room. Bookshelves hold old copies of religious texts, cookbooks, and novels. The rest of the furniture is gone, and the window is no longer boarded up, allowing sunlight into the room. 

3. Dining room. A long table and three chairs, all covered in bite marks. The skeletal corpse of the dead member of the angry mob lies atop the table, with a makeshift spear next to it.

4. Fireplace room. A large fireplace built on the east wall is empty. The ashes of a bonfire made of sticks and furniture dominate the room, yet nothing is burned. The ghost will not enter this room, fearing even the memory of the fire.

5. Kitchen. Empty cans and drained bottles of oil lie on the floor and counters, some of them seemingly untouched since the man lived.

6. Workshop. Filled with saws, axes, wrenches, and other tools.

7. Trapped room. This room has no ceiling, allowing the Exorcist to see into room 10. When the mob came, one of them set a bear trap in this room to prevent the ghost from coming through. It still lies there today, covered in dust. If stepped on, it deals 2d4 damage.

8. Bathroom. Under the sink are a few containers of powdered cleaning products.

9. Overgrown room. The east wall has fallen apart, and the room is now filled with stinging nettles. Under them is a wooden box, which contains about 12 gp in banknotes and a small key to the study's desk in room 12.

10. Bedroom hallway. The floor has mostly collapsed, leaving only a single thin beam, which requires a DEX check to cross safely. On a failure, the Exorcist falls into room 6. On a failure by 5 or more, they fall into room 7. Falling deals 1d6 damage, and falling into room 7 may cause the bear trap to go off.

11. Main bedroom. The bed is gone, taken for the fire. The southern wall is missing its wallpaper, and a section of it is made of wooden boards instead of brick. Behind those boards is the corpse of the old man, mummified, beaten, and burned.

12. Study. The only piece of furniture left is a large desk, with a locked drawer unlocked by the key in room 9. Inside are a set of loose papers, all undated journal entries. One talks about a few children from town who came and threw rocks through his window - the old man stayed inside, afraid of both the stones and of worsening his reputation. Another talks about when he invited a young man and his wife from another country for dinner. They had a wonderful time, and he hopes to do it again someday.

13. Guest bedroom. The bed is gone, and the floor is marred by dried blood - this is where the member of the mob died. A bloodied knife still sits on the ground.

The Ghost

When the Exorcist's sword is drawn, the ghost is forced to fight. The ghost takes 1d8 damage per round spent in sunlight.

HP: 36

AC: 10

Each round, the ghost will do two of these things:

Collapse: the ghost will cause part of the roof to collapse, forcing the Exorcist to make a DEX save or take 1d8 damage and be knocked prone. This will also let a beam of sunlight into the room.

Devour: if the Exorcist still has rations, the ghost consumes 1d3 of them. Otherwise, it deals 2d4 damage.

Extinguish: the ghost puts out all the light in the room, and causes the temperature to drop precipitously. The first time this happens, it deals 1 damage. The second time, 1d4. Then 1d6, 1d8, etc. Each use allows a CON save for half. Doing something to heat up the room will make the damage go back to 1.

Weep: the ghost cries of the things it has endured, forcing the Exorcist to see them. The Exorcist must make a CHA save or lose an action next turn (instead of moving and attacking they can only move or attack, for example) as they push through the ghost's memories.

When the ghost is defeated, it disintegrates into feathery fragments, which ascend through the roof of the house and into Heaven.

Escape from McNeil Island, Expanded

Escape from McNeil Island was an adventure made by purplecthulhu for Libra, and then posted as a set of GM's notes. I've expanded the adventure into a small pointcrawl with everything you need to run it - win conditions, random encounters, a bestiary, etc.

The PCs are psychics, magicians, and other supernatural entities placed in OSIRIS Containment Facility 302, on a small island in Washington. Due to a set of unrelated incidents, they've all been moved to the site's infimary, putting them in a perfect place to escape when охотник убийца, a Soviet supersoldier project, breaks out of the ConFac, leaving it in chaos.

You can download the adventure here.

 

also ha this is actually a GLOGtober post i tricked you

 

The Response Engine (Sunless Horizon Intro Dungeon)

Since I released the Sunless Horizon beta last September, I've run it through another short playtest and have been working on the next beta. That's been going much more slowly than I had hoped, however.

To take a bit of a break from it, I've polished up the dungeon I used for the playtest into a fully usable adventure. It's heavily inspired by Lair of the Lamb, taking its core concept (you start in the dungeon with no equipment and have to break out) and the earliest section (being chased around by some horrible thing you can't kill).

It also borrows part of the Activation Chamber test from Dan's Minimodule 2: FIRST CONTACT PROTOCOL.

I expect that the most divisive thing about will be the lack of random encounters - instead, the dungeon is almost entirely full, and time pressure comes from the Response Engine moving towards a Black Zone, with the PCs (hopefully) managing to escape before it reaches it.

Click for the PDF

On Depthcrawls + The Hundred Hands Depthcrawl

Part 1: The Depthcrawl

Depthcrawls are a new way to track space in RPGs, pioneered by Cavegirl's Gardens of Ynn. They are presented as a table, rolled on with an increasing bonus (the Depth), until a goal is reached.

Each of these rolls gives you a location. Each time the players pass through one of these locations, their Depth increases by one. This leads to them to the higher end of the table, and stranger environments.

For example, your players have just entered a depthcrawl, so you roll, and get a 13, which the table says is an abandoned tower. They are currently at Depth 0, because they just arrived. When they leave the tower and keep going, they would reach Depth 1, and you would roll on the table with a +1 bonus.

As well as locations, depthcrawls will usually have extra tables - Gardens of Ynn has an encounter table (rolled after the PCs spend time in a location) and a detail table. These tables are unaffected by Depth.

Players can also move backwards (returning to a location and decreasing Depth) or sideways (rolling a new location and not changing Depth).

Depthcrawls are very situational - generally, they're best used in environments that are either fluid (alternate planes like the Gardens of Ynn) or large enough to have wandering around seem sensible (an abandoned city).

Recently, depthcrawls have become more common, with blogs like I Don't Remember That Move creating new ones. After a discussion on Discord, Morgan (of no blog, sadly) and I created a framework to use for depthcrawl generation.

Part 2: The Template  

an epiphany

The template is made of three steps: the Aesthetic, the Threat, and the Goal.

The Aesthetic is the location of the crawl itself - the Gardens of Ynn are Alice in Wonderland-like, the Stygian Library is an endless repository of books, and Seraphim's Gate is a distorted assembly of cathedrals.

The Threat is something specific to this location - not just monsters in general, but something particular. In the Garden, the Threat is environmental, in the form of the Idea of Thorns. It could also be a particularly dominating group, like the Stygian Library's orders of librarians.

Finally, the Goal is the thing at the center, all the way at the highest depth. The Library's all-knowing computer, or Araquiel, the angel at the center of Seraphim's Gate. This should be something other than "a load of money" - it should be unattainable anywhere outside of the depthcrawl.

Template Example

We're going to use this as our example setting.

Our Aesthetic is winding tunnels of stone hands, interspersed with clusters of different stone organs - a room of eyes, one of stomachs, and so on.

Our Threat is the embodied sins. While you fight them as monsters, they are also influences, slowly affecting your mind as you spend time in the maze.

Obviously, our Goal is the ascended's brain, which shows you how to follow that long-forgotten person into the Final Heaven.

Part 3: Filling the Frame

Now that we have an outline, we can start to fill it in.

First, you want to determine how long you want the depthcrawl to be - this will decide how large of an environment table you need.

For short depthcrawls, make an 8-entry Environment table, and roll a d4. This gives you a minimum of 5 locations, and a maximum of 8.

Medium-size depthcrawls can use a 15-entry Environment table, rolling a d6. This gives you a minimum of 10 locations, and a maximum of 15.

Large depthcrawls should be of comparable size to the Gardens of Ynn - a 35-entry table with a d20 roll. This gives you a minimum of 15 locations, and a maximum of 35.

The last result of any of these is X+ - so for a short depthcrawl, the last result on the table is 8+, not just 8.

Now, you fill the table, with more mundane entries on the lower end, and stranger ones at the higher end. The Hundred Hands is going to be small depthcrawl (because I'm lazy and it's just an example), so this is my table.

1. A cavernous, empty room made of hands all grasping each other.
2. A bone of the ascended, full of holes. The wind slowly plays it like a flute, frightening spirits. Every turn you spend here decreases your Sinfulness by one.
3. The ascended's lungs, slowly expanding and filling with lightly hallucinogenic incenses.
4. One of the ascended's eyes, focusing any light in the room into a web of burning beams.
5. The stomach, which is half-filled with acid. Stone sculptures of food float over the acid, unharmed.
6. Petrification is slow. This room of hands still lives. They grasp blindly at anything touching them.
7. The heart, the size of a house. It is crossed with rivers of pure, cold water, and rains constantly. These rivers cannot be forded without equipment. The rain makes the stone slippery - when under stress, characters must make a DEX check or slip.
8. The brain, sitting on a stone pedestal. If you have a Sinfulness of more than 5, it prevents you from touching it. 

Aside: Sinfulness

Sinfulness is being used to track the PC's ability to ascend. At 2 Sinfulness, they must make a Wisdom save each hour or act according to their dominant sin (whichever one has dealt the most Sinfulness to them). On a failed save, they will still act, but they will act in accordance to their sin (someone dominantly Slothful will still set up a bridge over a chasm, they'll just be really lazy about it). At 4 Sinfulness, the PC must make a Wisdom save each hour or completely follow the dominant sin (someone dominantly Slothful will lie around and complain that they have to do any work). Past 5 Sinfulness, you are unable to ascend.

After you finish your main table, you should create an encounter table. This one is unaffected by Depth, but should be about the size of your environment table - you can expect to roll on both of them the same amount of times.

In this case, (because I'm lazy) each of the 8 monsters are a different Sin. Some are embodied, taking forms of hard stone. They can be treated as Golems, with an extra attack that provokes Wisdom saves or increases Sinfulness. Others are disembodied, floating invisibly through the air to whisper in your ears. They can be treated as Ghosts, except instead of level drain they inflict Sinfulness.

1. Sloth (embodied) - an enormously fat, cheerful statue. Obstinately blocks your path, has a job it wants you to do for it - 1. move this heavy rock 2. find my lost ring 3.  4. nothing, it's just not moving.
2. Pride (embodied) - a glorious marble sculpture. Automatically hostile unless praised.
3. Wrath (embodied) - acts like a professional wrestler. Wants a challenge - it doesn't have to be you.
4. Envy (disembodied) - wants the prettiest/most magic/otherwise superlative item you have. Can be tricked.
5. Greed (disembodied) - will just start stealing your stuff. Runs if attacked.
6. Gluttony (disembodied) - clamps on to the highest CON character and starts to drain them (1 CON per round).
7. Lust (disembodied) - wants to go on a date. Candles, nice food, the whole thing.

Part 4: Depthcrawl Variations

One of the biggest problems with depthcrawls is a lack of player choice - they just go, continuing forwards until they hit the point where the game is done.

Morgan has made many complex variations on the depthcrawl in order to solve this (along with other problems, like the amount of time it takes to generate areas with detail tables). They're all great, and you should definitely take a look at them. 

Along with those, I have a simple variant of my own - a branching pointcrawl. To add more choice in the players' exploration, roll 1d4 locations each time, showing the players each one. When they move to one, then roll details and encounters for that particular location.

Ghost Ship to Planet Transylvania

Happy Halloween!
whispering from offstage
Happy... Septemberween?

Ghost Ship to Planet Transylvania is a collaborative effort between me and John Rattlemayne, following a challenge from the ever-productive glog-ghetto of the OSR Discord. It's an 11-page stealth dungeon/pointcrawl thing set on Dracula's coffin-ship, with plenty of original art from Rattlemayne, a wonderfully garish layout (also by Rattlemayne) and exactly 1,459 and 1/3 words, by us both.

Click on the inviting hands and faces of the Chief Engineer and his Assistant to grab the pdf for yourself, and be filled with unnameable horror for all eternity!

Engine Heart - Far From the Sun

Engine Heart is a d10 RPG about utility robots. I've made a couple edits to the character creation system, and now an adventure outline thingy I guess.

Overview

A robot onboard a warehouse ship invents the concept of worker's rights. The control AI doesn't understand, and gets continually more frustrated the more the robots ask for it to give them rights.

Cargo Ship SEN-49230

SEN-49230 is a warehouse ship, built to carry cargo out to outer-system colonies. Since the fall of humanity (yes this is a plot point of Engine Heart, don't think about it too hard), it's been in orbit around Neptune, with its command AI Foreman-302 waiting for orders from above.

SEN-49230 is divided into 5 parts: the crew decks, cargo containers, the bridge, engineering, and the hull.

The crew decks are the lowest security area, rendered in yellow. The cargo containers are higher security, and colored orange. The bridge (on the left) and engineering (on the right) are the most secure areas of the ship. The hull is the outside of the ship: while it has no security, it also has no gravity.

The Crew Decks

• Low security - Foreman doesn't pay much attention to this place (1 in 10 chance of being seen)
• Not much to do: no important rooms or anything
• Slow security response (2d10 minutes from alarm being set off)
• Terminals allow text chat with Foreman

NPCs

Custer-440: put-upon cleaning bot, happy to join you, selfish, box-shaped
Richard-846: Servant android, writes bad poetry but thinks it makes him smarter than everyone

The Cargo Containers

• Medium security - Foreman is worried someone might steal something (5 in 10 chance of being seen)
• Medium response time (1d10 minutes from alarm being set off)
• Lots of things for you to steal: 8 in 10 chance you manage to find what you want, but it takes hours of searching

NPCs

Thomas-832: perfectionist loading mech who takes control of everything

Anna-021: Small, roomba-like wheeled cargo mover, very cheerful, thinks "rights" are probably good, so why not have them

Ivan-668: Manager robot, annoyed that Thomas is so controlling, says he has all the rights he could want, knows where everything is

The Bridge

• High security - Foreman's core is here (8 in 10 chance of being seen)
• Fast response time (1 minute from alarm going off)
• The ship can be piloted if you reach the manual controls 
• Foreman can seal himself and the manual controls off behind durable blast doors

NPCs

Foreman-302: doesn't understand "rights" and never will, very stubborn, starts off confused about rights but gets angrier the more you push him

Patricia-006: Pilot assistance drone, likes looking at things, a bit creepy, only cares about rights when it comes to looking at things

Engineering

• High security - the reactor is here (8 in 10 chance of being seen) 
• Medium response time (1d10 minutes from alarm going off)
• If the reactor is deactivated, the ship begins to fall into Neptune.
• Without power, Foreman can't close the blast doors in the Bridge.

NPCs

Howard-401: fault finding drone, exceptionally bored, constantly scanning PCs for physical issues. Doesn't like Lucas very much.
Lucas-900: Large repair mech with many welding arms. Friends with Howard.
Arnold-202: Small, many-legged robot. Spends most of its time inside the reactor core. Lonely, but worried about what could happen to the reactor if it leaves.

The Hull

• No security: there are no cameras on the outside of the ship
• No gravity

NPCs

Olivia-209: spider-shaped external repair bot, hard to reach, emotionless, calculates the advantages of "rights" based off what it could do for the ship as a whole. never comes inside.
Stan-975: olivia's counterpart, likes rights too much, eventually starts to tear apart engineering if told about rights

Security Forces

Foreman starts by releasing large rolling stunbots that seek to move and control the PCs. As the revolution gets closer to succeeding, he starts to send fast, aggressive drones that intend to kill the PCs.