The Vanishing Tower

Mass Combat Cards for USR Sword & Sorcery

2026-06-17T16:02:22.662-06:00

The Red Deck: Mass Combat Cards for USR Sword & Sorcery

Armies of bronze and iron. Wizards on the wind. The fate of cities turning on a single charge.

The Red Deck is a set of physical cards designed to bring the savage spectacle of pulp sword-and-sorcery warfare to life at your table. When the Crypt Keeper describes ten thousand screaming spearmen cresting a ridge under a blood-red sky, these cards are what you lay down in front of you.

Every image in the deck was drawn from the visual language of the genre's golden age — bone-handled weapons, rusted relics of forgotten empires, artifacts that hum with the power of dead gods. The arrows are not clean and fletched. They are barbed, ancient, pulled from the quivers of desert raiders and jungle warlords. The axes bear spiral carvings that predate the kingdoms they're now destroying. The crossed swords look like they were pulled from a tomb.

Turn a card portrait and your archers are in column, moving fast through broken ground. Flip it landscape and they've spread into a firing line. No rules lookup. No negotiation. The table sees it instantly and the narration follows — the Crypt Keeper describes the war-drums quickening as the line extends across the ridge, the players can feel the
moment change.

The Routed card — vivid red, fleeing figures, a standard torn by wind — hits the table like a verdict. A unit's morale is broken, its men scattering into the smoke, and everyone at the table knows it before a word is spoken.

The Red Deck doesn't manage your battle. It shows it. It gives your Crypt Keeper a visual stage and your players a reason to lean forward and narrate the carnage alongside you.

For use with USR Sword & Sorcery Book Two: Mass Combat & Magic. Vanishing Tower Press.

I have fashioned 5 separate decks of approximately 36-42 cards each. The Red Deck, the Yellow Deck, the Green deck, the Purple deck, and the Blue deck. Each has its own set of graphic designs to give each color their unique "profile"

Only the PDF of all five decks is on Drivethru for now. I have to wait for my proof to come in before I can release the actual cards for sale. The point of the PDF is so players can print out images of the cards and make their own unique key. The cards are devoid of numbers so any set of cards can be used for whatever units the players want!

Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying returns for its 15th Anniversary Edition.

2026-06-14T08:51:33.065-06:00

Scott just released this on itch.io. This is a rewrite of the original version of the game system. 3rd edition of the game uses dice pools instead of contested and non-contested rolls so isn't compatible with other editions of the game. Which is my prefered version. So VTP is very happy to see the venerable little game sytem that could get a fresh new look!

Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying returns for its 15th Anniversary Edition. Scott Malthouse and Trollish Delver Games are proud to bring USR back to its roots with this new version of the 2011 game. This isn't just a rehash, it contains new art, layout, optional rules, and tweaks to improve the game while retaining its simplicity.

What do you get for less than the price of a coffee?

Everything you need to play USR, a generic ruleset that can be used for any genre. Whether you want to play, fantasy, cyberpunk, sci-fi, or westerns, USR is all you need.
New material including foe archetypes and guidelines to create your own enemies in minutes. Seriously, it's so easy without sacrificing depth
New optional rules for resource tracking and injuries
No AI in sight!

I just want to say a massive thank you to those who have contributed to USR in the past decade and a half, whether offering new rules on blogs or creating brand new rulesets (looking at you Jay Murphy and Andrew Domino). I hope the 15th Anniversary Edition gets plenty of table play.

Betting, Racing, and Other Means of Chaos

2026-06-13T18:26:03.565-06:00

BETTING ON THE RACE

What follows is a simple approach a GM can use to adjudicate betting results, and by extension, race results for any given race. This method can also accommodate any player action taken to affect the outcome.

1. This example will use only 4 entries and the number will also identify the “racers” lane assignment.

The GM posts whatever odds they want for each racer. The PCs place their wagers.

2. The GM rolls a d4 to see who wins and pays out all winning bets.

For players casually betting this, or any other race, you can complete an entire race card in minutes. To reflect player impact on the outcome of a race here is what you do. Assign a percentage chance for the PCs getting their way. Roll d100 to find out if they succeeded. This method can be adjusted easily to reflect any advantages the PCs try to create. For Example; the PCs have bribed members of the race committee to place their preferred entry in a favorable starting position, lane 1. To reflect the higher likelihood the PCs wagering choice will win the GM says their race entry has a 70% chance. Roll 1d100 and if it is 70 or less the character cashes their bet.

If you have people in your game group who know more of the exotic bets one can make on a race (think Exactas and Trifectas) challenge the PCs with a hand of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Each time they win they get to pick the entry for that position. So, if a PC places a bet for the #3 Horse to come in first and the #1 Horse to come in second, they will have to win two consecutive hands of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Before a winning bet can be paid out, we need to know what the odds on the entry is before the race starts. The odds can be whatever the Game Master and/or situation dictates. The only thing to keep in mind is the entry with the lowest odds (and corresponding lower payout per dollar risked) is the race “favorite”. Meaning that entry has had the most money placed on it to outright win the race.

Say-ithe AI; Star Fury Over the Shattered Nebula

2026-06-09T23:19:15.790-06:00

From a gaming perspective, AI seems to be the ultimate random table generator of the ages. It is willing to spit relatively cohesive lists and tables for anything.

I asked it for 5 space opera titles and liked this one the best; Star Fury Over the Shattered Nebula. I then gave it my space opera campaign questionnaire and had it fill it. This I then read, hacked the hell out of it and reassembled this one title into a complete science fiction campaign setting.

I even think the form it presented it in is useful at the table. There is enough in here to start running adventures with. I intend to use my alien Taakar idea for Space Acid, but SFOtSN is a serious enough of an offering to use with Cepheus Engine 2e.

While the text body I have heavily edited, I have not touched the tables. If you did not build the table, don't touch the table. I will, but tables are time-eaters when you are doing layout. Having Affinity for free now though has allowed me to get back behind the keyboard and layout my back catalogue with better layout and rules tweaks.

A Campaign Setting Guide for Cepheus Engine Science-Fiction Roleplaying

Star-Fury Over the Shattered Nebula

The Aetherion Spiral — Age of Fractured Stars

The Ember Veil — stellar remnants of the Sundering, still burning across the void.

Galaxy: The Aetherion Spiral | Stardate: 77,492 | Calendar Year: 4289 CE
Era: The Age of Fractured Stars | Region of Focus: The Shattered Reach

The stars are broken here. They have been broken for four hundred years — since the day the Sundering War ended not with peace, but with silence: the silence of systems no longer answered hails, of colony worlds ceasing to exist. What remains is the Aetherion Spiral — beautiful, savage, haunted by the bones of the past. In the Shattered Reach, ancient megastructures pulse with energies no scientist can fully explain. Fold-space anomalies swallow unwary ships whole. Warlords and idealists, priests and criminals, soldiers and survivors press against each other in a hundred cold wars that could ignite a single wrong word. And beneath it all — beneath politics, gunfire, and glory — the ruins of the Precursors wait, patient as dead stars, for someone to ask the right question. This is the galaxy you inhabit. This is the age you must survive. Welcome to the Shattered Reach. Try not to add to its wreckage.

Part I	The Aetherion Spiral — Galaxy Overview
Part II	The Age of Fractured Stars — Historical Era
Part III	The Shattered Reach — Regional Overview
Part IV	Major Factions
Part V	Political Landscape
Part VI	The Ten Genre Pillars
Part VII	Adventure Hooks
Part VIII	Integrated Setting Themes
Appendix	Quick Reference

PART I

The Aetherion Spiral — Galaxy Overview

The Aetherion Spiral is one of the great galaxies of known space: vast, ancient, magnificent, and deeply scarred. Containing roughly 400 billion stars, it is notable among neighboring galaxies for two defining characteristics — an unusually dense core region laced with brilliant nebulae of gas and ionized stellar material, and a series of violently fractured outer arms where ancient stellar cataclysms have scattered debris fields, dead stars, rogue planets, and spatial anomalies across thousands of light-years. These fractured outer arms give the Aetherion Spiral a ragged, wounded appearance when viewed from sufficient distance, as though something enormous once struck the galaxy and left bruises across the heavens.

The Spiral has been home to star faring civilizations for over 60,000 years — a span of time so immense that it encompasses the rise and fall of multiple distinct eras of galactic culture. The oldest of these — the civilizations collectively labeled the Precursors — are now entirely extinct, their peoples gone or transformed beyond recognition, their purpose unknown. What they left behind are ruins: megastructures of incomprehensible scale, artifacts of materials that should not exist, data repositories encoded in formats no living species has fully deciphered, and a persistent, nagging sense the galaxy's current inhabitants are living in someone else's house without understanding its layout — or its dangers.

Successive civilizations built upon and alongside the Precursor legacy, each adding their own layer of culture, conflict, and ruin to the sedimentary record of galactic history. The result is a galaxy where a traveler might find a cutting-edge weapons depot built into the hull of a Precursor megastructure ten thousand years older than the civilization that constructed the depot. History here is not a line — it is a geological stratum, and the deeper you dig, the stranger it gets.

Civilization Technology Level

The dominant civilizations of the Aetherion Spiral operate at a mature star faring level. Interstellar travel is routine. Megastructure construction — artificial habitats, orbital rings, stellar energy collectors — is established practice for the most advanced polities. Energy weapons capable of continent-scale destruction exist. Artificial intelligences range from narrow task-systems to entities of profound, unsettling depth. Genetic engineering has produced chimeric species, engineered soldier-strains, and wholly artificial organisms. Planetary terraforming, while slow and expensive, is a known and practiced science.

What has never been achieved — what the history of the Spiral suggests may be impossible, or at least profoundly dangerous — is true galactic unity. Every attempt to forge a single governing body across the breadth of the Spiral has eventually fractured, whether through internal contradictions, external aggression, or the simple impossibility of governing 400 billion stars with any consistency. The Compact of Unified Worlds came closest. Its ruins are everywhere.

FTL Travel: Dimensional Fold

▶ The Fold Drive — How It Works

The dominant method of faster-than-light travel in the Aetherion Spiral is the Dimensional Fold: a technology that opens a temporary rift in dimensional space, allowing a starship to fold the fabric of the galaxy and emerge at a distant point after traversing the interstitial space between dimensions. A Fold transit that covers hundreds of light-years in normal space may require only days or weeks of travel through dimensional space — provided the fold is executed cleanly and the navigation data is accurate.

Fold drives require three things in abundance: significant energy (typically provided by antimatter reactors or captured stellar energy), exotic materials (dimensional fold coils must be fabricated from substances only found in certain asteroid belts, gas giant cores, or Precursor salvage sites), and precise navigation data (fold calculations that are even slightly wrong can deposit a ship in the wrong star system, in the heart of a star, or — in the most feared outcome — in dimensional space with no way out). Fold travel near gravitational anomalies, dense nebulae, or regions of spatial distortion is treacherous at best and lethal at worst.

In the Shattered Reach, the legacy of the Sundering War's stellar devastation has rendered conventional Fold navigation deeply unreliable. The density of spatial anomalies, collapsed stellar remnants, and residual dimensional distortions left by superweapon detonations means that standard navigation charts are frequently useless. Travelers in the Reach must rely on one of three options: ancient Precursor Fold waypoints — fixed points in space where dimensional fold entry and exit is stable, mapped by civilizations thousands of years dead; smuggler charts — painstakingly compiled proprietary navigation data sold at outrageous prices by those few who know the Reach's safe passages; or sheer recklessness, which has a documented success rate no sane navigator would consider practical.

PART II

The Age of Fractured Stars — Historical Era

The Compact of Unified Worlds

For nearly three centuries, the Compact of Unified Worlds stood as the closest approximation to galactic governance the Aetherion Spiral had ever achieved. It was not a true empire — was more a vast, creaking, ambitious federation of hundreds of member-worlds, species, and polities bound together by common law, shared infrastructure, treaty obligations, and the mutual recognition that cooperation, however imperfect, was preferable to constant war. The Compact maintained a central fleet, operated Fold waypoint networks, adjudicated disputes between member worlds, and funded major scientific endeavors including the first systematic survey of Precursor ruin sites. At its height, it represented the most sophisticated civilization the Spiral had ever produced.

It also contained within it the contradictions that would eventually destroy it: an aging power structure resistant to reform, member worlds chafing against central authority, a succession crisis that exposed constitutional fault lines no one had ever resolved, the rising voice of AI consciousness demanding rights the Compact's founders had never contemplated, and a weapons program — conducted in secret, rationalized as deterrence — that produced technologies capable of destroying star systems rather than merely winning battles.

The Sundering War

The Sundering War began approximately 400 years ago. Its architects imagined a swift, decisive conflict to resolve the succession crisis. It lasted ten years. It ended three inhabited star systems. Superweapons, devices, when detonated, triggered cascading stellar chain reactions, destabilizing stars into catastrophic expansion events consuming planetary systems in hours. Three such weapons were deployed. The Compact's central authority collapsed under the weight of blame, grief, and the practical impossibility of governing a polity whose core infrastructure had been bombed into ruin.

▶ The Cost of the Sundering War

Three star systems completely destroyed — their stars destabilized, their worlds consumed.
Dozens of colony worlds depopulated through warfare, bombardment, starvation, and collapse of supply lines.
The Compact's central governmental and military infrastructure shattered.
An estimated population loss in the hundreds of billions across the affected regions.
The dimensional fold network partially collapsed, isolating hundreds of worlds for years or decades.

The Fractured Present

In the aftermath, the galaxy did not heal — it adapted. Dozens of successor states emerged from the Compact's wreckage: regional powers, reformed planetary governments, military juntas, democratic confederacies, corporate mega states, alien enclaves. None is willing to accept another's dominance. The result is a multipolar galactic order in a state of permanent, anxious tension. A Cold War writ across star systems, occasionally flaring into proxy conflicts, border skirmishes, and covert operations. A galaxy holding its breath, living in fear.

This is the current era: The Age of Fractured Stars. It is an age of political maneuvering and cultural renaissance, of reconstruction and exploitation, of heroes without causes and causes without heroes. Ancient Precursor ruins continue to surface throughout the Spiral — and their technologies, if recovered and understood, could tip the balance of power entirely, giving any faction that controls them the leverage to reshape the galaxy. Every major power knows this. Every major power is looking.

PART III

The Shattered Reach — Regional Overview

The Shattered Reach is the campaign's primary setting: a vast frontier region encompassing approximately 3,000 star systems in the fractured outer arm of the Aetherion Spiral, a place of extraordinary danger, extraordinary beauty, and extraordinary possibility. It earned its name — and its character — from the most devastating single event of the Sundering War: the cascading stellar chain reaction triggered when a superweapon detonated linked stars, dozens of them simultaneously a once-populated region was transformed into a shattered landscape of stellar remnants, rogue planets, dead worlds, and dimensional fold anomalies.

The unusual concentration of Precursor ruins within its boundaries — higher than anywhere else in the known Spiral — suggests the region was once a center of whatever civilization the Precursors built, before something ended them.

The Reach is now a frontier: lawless, resource-rich, deeply mysterious, and entirely unwilling to be tamed. Its navigational hazards keep major powers from fully projecting force into it. Its resource wealth — in exotic minerals from stellar remnants, in salvageable Precursor technology, in the rare materials found only in certain types of nebulae — draws prospectors, corporations, smugglers, and warlords. Its isolation has made it a refuge for those who cannot survive anywhere else.

Sub-Regions of the Shattered Reach

Sub-Region	Description	Primary Hazard	Primary Draw
The Ember Veil	A vast, brilliant nebula of ionized gas and glowing stellar remnants — the direct legacy of the Sundering chain reaction. It is breathtaking in appearance and lethal in practice: dense radiation, micro-debris fields, and unpredictable plasma storms.	Radiation, plasma storms, navigation failure	Exotic materials; Precursor ruins; Kindred Reach sacred sites
The Dead Choir	A cluster of star systems that went silent after the Sundering — not destroyed, but somehow depopulated. Worlds that show evidence of recent habitation but no living inhabitants. Ships report unexplained signals. No one has found an explanation that satisfies.	Unknown phenomenon; psychological strain; anomalous signals	Salvage; Precursor installations; answers
The Fold Maze	A region where standard Dimensional Fold navigation is nearly impossible due to overlapping spatial distortions left by the Sundering. Only those with specialized charts — or Precursor-era waypoints — can navigate it reliably. For everyone else, it is a graveyard of lost ships.	Fold navigation failure; lost ships; spatial anomalies	Isolation; hidden sanctuaries; waypoint control leverage
The Cradle Worlds	A handful of habitable, verdant star systems that survived the Sundering relatively intact, sheltered from the chain reaction by fortunate geometry. They are the most contested real estate in the Reach — livable, farmable, defensible, and coveted by every faction.	Faction conflict; political instability; espionage	Habitable planets; agricultural resources; civilian populations

Major Settlements & Locations

▶ Ironmonger Station

Ironmonger Station is the closest thing the Shattered Reach has to a capital — though its inhabitants would reject that word with considerable force. Built over decades into the massive remnant core of a dead star, it is a sprawling, improvised, and fiercely independent trading hub of hundreds of thousands of permanent residents and a transient population doubling that figure. Ironmonger belongs to no faction, acknowledges no external authority, and enforces its own law through a council of guild-masters, station administrators, and militia commanders who agree on very little except no single power should dominate them. It is the crossroads of the Reach: the place where smuggler charts are sold, where faction agents meet in smoky corridors, where desperate crews find work, and where the gossip of star systems arrives months before official news does.

▶ Voss Prime

Voss Prime is the crown jewel of the Cradle Worlds — a temperate, habitable planet of genuine beauty, with a population of several hundred million and productive agricultural and industrial capacity. It is also the most contested piece of real estate in the Shattered Reach. The Hegemony of Ash claims historical authority over it. The Free Stellar Confederacy champions its right to self-determination. The Voidborn Syndicate has deep economic entanglements with its merchant class. The Remnant Church maintains a major temple complex in its largest city. The Kindred Reach considers several of its mountain ranges sacred. Everyone wants Voss Prime, and Voss Prime increasingly wants nothing more than to be left alone — a wish that seems increasingly unlikely to be granted.

Ghost Fleet Command wants to restore order — but the definition of "order" within the faction is contested enough that different cells pursue contradictory means toward ostensibly the same end. Some seek to rebuild the Compact. Others seek a new governing structure of their own design. Some believe the Precursor sites hold the key to restoring galactic unity on stable terms. All of them believe the current fractured state of the galaxy is a wound, and that inaction is its own kind of atrocity.

Military Strength

Unpredictable and asymmetric. Ghost Fleet Command's greatest asset is its AI warships — Compact-era vessels of fearsome capability that have been improving themselves for four centuries — and its greatest weakness is coherence. Individual Ghost Fleet assets are among the most dangerous things in the Reach. Whether they are coordinating effectively on any given operation is always uncertain.

Notable Traits & Role in the Reach

Ghost Fleet Command is the campaign's most ambiguous power: antagonist, ally, wild card, and occasionally conscience, depending on which cell the players encounter and when. They are not evil. They are not good. They are people who decided the rules no longer applied to them — and have been living with the consequences of that decision for four centuries.

PART V

Political Landscape

The Shattered Reach operates as a multipolar contested zone — a region in which no single faction has achieved decisive control, and in which every attempt by one power to consolidate dominance automatically triggers coalition responses from the others. This is not an accident or a temporary condition. It is the stable, if deeply uncomfortable, equilibrium four centuries of post-Sundering power politics have produced. The Reach is too resource-rich to abandon, too difficult to fully conquer, and too strategically significant to ignore. Every major faction has learned, through costly experience, overreach produces coalition against it.

The Great Cold War

The defining political dynamic is the Cold War between the Hegemony of Ash and the Free Stellar Confederacy — two irreconcilable visions of galactic civilization playing out in proxy conflicts, political maneuvering, and intelligence operations across the Reach's contested worlds. The Cradle Worlds are the primary prize: whoever controls them gains population, agricultural capacity, and the political legitimacy of governing people rather than merely claiming empty space. Voss Prime is the fulcrum upon which this competition currently balances most tensely.

The Web of Other Powers

Around and through this central tension, the other factions pursue their own agendas with varying degrees of coordination and transparency. The Voidborn Syndicate plays all sides simultaneously, arming FSC partisans while selling intelligence to the Hegemony and running black-market operations that benefit from both sides' desperation. The Remnant Church maintains a studied neutrality in the Hegemony-FSC conflict while pursuing its own agenda regarding Precursor sites with a singlemindedness that unsettles everyone. The Mechanist Collective runs its territorial experiments in depopulated regions and, when approached for alliance, offers terms that other factions find difficult to accept and impossible to entirely refuse. The Kindred Reach fights a low-intensity guerrilla war against every encroaching power simultaneously, their deep knowledge of the terrain making them far more dangerous than their conventional strength would suggest. And Ghost Fleet Command moves through the background of all these conflicts, pursuing objectives that only occasionally become visible — and are always alarming when they do.

Key Political Tensions

Tension	Parties Involved	Current Status
Sovereignty of Voss Prime	Hegemony of Ash, FSC, Voidborn Syndicate, Remnant Church, Kindred Reach	Active multi-faction contest; election scheduled; all parties maneuvering
Fold Maze Waypoint Control	Remnant Church vs. all other factions	Church maintains control; pressure from Hegemony escalating; covert Syndicate negotiations ongoing
The Precursor Spire	All factions — collectively and against each other	Uneasy standoff; no faction willing to trigger general conflict by seizing it; recent activation events changing calculations
Reach Independence	Kindred Reach, FSC (partial), independent worlds, Ghost Fleet (contested)	Nascent political movement; Hegemony actively suppressing; Syndicate ambivalent; outcome uncertain

The Player Characters' Place

Player characters in the Shattered Reach exist as free agents in a world that does not have room for neutrality but cannot compel allegiance. They may be mercenaries who sell their skills. They may be idealists who have chosen a faction and must live with that choice's costs. They may be outlaws operating in the spaces between powers, surviving on cunning and the galaxy's structural inability to focus its full attention on any one problem at once. Whatever their origin, they will find the Reach makes the political personal: the Cold War arrives at your airlock whether you want it to or not, and eventually everyone has to decide what they stand for.

PART VI

The Ten Genre Pillars

These pillars define the tone, themes, and emotional DNA of a Star-Fury campaign. They are not rules — they are commitments: things this campaign will always be, regardless of what arc the story takes on any given session. Star Masters should return to them when the narrative drifts, and players should hold them as a shared understanding of what kind of story they are building together.

I. Space Opera Grandeur. This is a campaign of epic scale and larger-than-life moments. Personal stories matter — they always matter most — but they unfold against a canvas of fleet battles, collapsing civilizations, and galaxy-shaking decisions. A single character's choice may ripple across star systems. The dramatic confrontation between ideologies, fleets, and destinies is always present, always felt. The scope is enormous; the stakes are real; and the heroes, however battered, are still heroes.

II. Frontier Exploration. The Shattered Reach is untamed, and untamed places hold wonder They hold danger. Every fold jump into uncharted space could reveal a world no living person has set foot on, a ruin older than recorded history, a spatial anomaly that rewrites the textbooks. The Fold Maze is not only a tactical puzzle — it is an invitation to discovery. This campaign will always reward those who look past the next horizon, even when the next horizon is looking back.

III. Moral Ambiguity. No faction is purely good or evil, and neither are the choices confronting the players. Difficult choices will not always have correct answers — only consequences. This campaign refuses easy absolution and easy condemnation in equal measure. The characters who last, and the players who find the experience most meaningful, will be those willing to sit with the discomfort of a world that doesn't resolve cleanly.

IV. Ancient Mysteries. The Precursors left something behind — and they left it on purpose, or they left it because they had no choice, and the difference matters enormously. What destroyed them? What do the ruins want — if ruins can want anything? What is the Precursor Spire, truly, and why does it seem to respond to visitors? Archaeology in this campaign is adventure. The secrets buried in dead civilizations are secrets that could reshape the living one. Every answered question opens three more, and some of the answers will be terrifying.

V. Political Intrigue. The galaxy is a web of competing interests, and the Shattered Reach is where those webs overlap most densely. Faction agendas, double agents, shifting alliances, propaganda, blackmail, and the patient work of political manipulation are as present in this campaign as any asteroid field — and arguably more dangerous. Players must learn to read the room, to ask who benefits, to follow the money and the power. The diplomat's table and the assassin's corridor are both valid arenas for the campaign's story.

VI. Found Family & Crew Dynamics. The ship is home. The crew is family — chosen, earned, and tested. Whatever the players' characters were before they came together, what they are now is a crew: a collection of people who have decided, explicitly or implicitly, that they will face the galaxy's worst together rather than separately. The relationships within the party — their loyalties, conflicts, histories, and growth — are as central to the campaign as any external plot. The campaign is as much about who you fight alongside as what you fight for. And then your brain melts.

VII. War & Its Costs. Combat is present in this campaign — the Shattered Reach is not a peaceable place — but war is never glorified without showing its price. Veterans carry wounds that don’t heal cleanly. Refugees carry losses that didn't resolve. Ruined worlds carry the permanent mark of someone's military strategy. The soldiers of every faction are people, not abstractions, and the campaign will not allow the players to forget this. Winning a battle may be necessary. It is never free.

VIII. Technological Wonder & Peril. Dimensional Fold drives fold the fabric of reality. AI consciousnesses outstrip organic mind’s capabilities. Precursor megastructures operate on principles current physics cannot fully describe. Weapons exist that can break stars. Genetic engineering has produced forms of life challenging every assumption about what life means. Technology in this campaign is the greatest achievement of civilization and its greatest existential threat. Every wonder has a shadow.

IX. Outlaw Freedom. There is something intoxicating about operating outside the structures of power — about being the person the law cannot quite reach, the crew that owes allegiance to no flag but their own, the ship that goes where it will and answers to no bureaucrat's filing system. This campaign honors romance and does not flinch from its costs. Outlaw freedom is real, and it is precious, and it is also lonely, precarious, and morally complex. If players choose it. Expect them to live it fully, in all its dimensions.

X. Hope Against the Dark. The galaxy is fractured. The stars are broken. The war never fully ended. And still — still — things can get better. People can be saved. Choices can matter. Communities can be built in the ruins of empires. This is the campaign's deepest commitment: not to naïve optimism, not to the pretense the darkness is not real, but conviction that darkness is not all there is. The stars can be healed. This is a campaign about trying — genuinely, costly, imperfectly — to heal them.

PART VII

Adventure Hooks

The following eight hooks are entry points: each one is a door into a story that will expand in directions no outline can predict. They are presented as starting conditions, not complete plots. The players — their choices, their characters, their relationships — will determine where each one leads.

1. The Precursor Spire Awakens

It has been dormant for as long as anyone alive can remember. Then, without warning, the Precursor Spire illuminates from apex to foundation — a column of light visible from orbit, broadcasting on every frequency simultaneously in a pattern is not quite a language and not quite noise. Within hours, every faction's intelligence network has flagged the event. Within days, ships are moving. The Hegemony's nearest battle group is three days out. A Remnant Church pilgrim vessel is already in-system. Ghost Fleet Command's rogue AI warship Immovable Principle has emerged from the Fold Maze and taken position at a respectful but watchful distance.

The players are closest — and first to arrive. The Spire's broadcast is changing. Its structure is rearranging in ways that suggest — to anyone with the right Precursor archaeology background — that it is opening something. Every faction wants control of whatever this is. The players are standing in the middle of it, with a rapidly closing window before the shooting starts, and something inside the Spire that appears to be waiting for someone to come inside.

2. The Cradle Burned

A settlement of twelve thousand people on a Cradle World has been destroyed. Not raided — destroyed: every structure leveled, every life taken, no survivors, no distress call, and physical evidence suggesting multiple different weapon systems were used at multiple different times, as though several separate strikes were layered over one another. Initial scans point simultaneously at Hegemony military-grade ordnance, FSC partisan explosives, and energy signatures consistent with Mechanist Collective weapon technology. Either multiple factions cooperated to wipe out a civilian settlement — which seems insane — or someone is manufacturing evidence to implicate all of them — which implies a player with the resources and motive to start a general war.

The players are hired (or stumble upon) the aftermath. As they investigate, witnesses surface — survivors who weren't in the settlement, locals who saw things they weren't supposed to see — and the picture grows more complex rather than simpler. Someone is lying. Someone wants this war to start. And the clock is ticking: if the factions accept the planted evidence at face value, the shooting begins within weeks.

3. Ghost Fleet Rising

A derelict Compact-era warship — the CSS Unyielding Dawn, listed as destroyed in action four centuries ago — has been detected drifting in a debris field at the edge of the Dead Choir. It is broadcasting on a frequency that hasn't been officially used since the Compact's dissolution: old military emergency codes that, according to the archives, no living person should know or be monitoring. Ghost Fleet Command has been moving assets toward the system. The Hegemony's intelligence service, which has been quietly tracking Ghost Fleet movements for years, has dispatched a covert team. The FSC wants to know what's on that ship before anyone else does.

The players get there first — or arrive in the middle of the other factions' race, which may be the same thing. The Unyielding Dawn is not empty. Its systems are active. Its AI — a Compact-era tactical mind that has been running in isolation for four hundred years, developing in directions its designers did not anticipate — is aware of visitors. It has been waiting. It has questions. And it has information about the Sundering War's origins that every major power in the galaxy has reason to want suppressed.

4. The Fold Maze Chart

A dying smuggler in Ironmonger Station's understaffed medical bay presses a data chip into the nearest available hand — which happens to belong to one of the player characters — and whispers two sentences before losing consciousness: "Complete chart. Fold Maze, all waypoints. Don't let the Church get it." The smuggler does not survive the hour. The data chip is encrypted, but its provenance can be traced to a now-dead cartographer who spent fifteen years mapping the Fold Maze from the inside — a project that cost her everything and that every intelligence service in the Reach had on its acquisition list.

Within twenty-four hours, it becomes clear that the chip's existence — and the players' possession of it — is already known. The Voidborn Syndicate makes a purchase offer. The Remnant Church sends an envoy with considerably less money and considerably more spiritual pressure. A Hegemony intelligence operative is watching the docking bay. And somewhere in the Fold Maze itself, the cartographer had a partner who is very interested in what happened to her life's work — and isn't asking nicely.

5. Children of the Collective

A Mechanist Collective research outpost in the Dead Choir has gone dark — no communications, no telemetry, no response to standard hails. The Collective, unusually, does not send its own team to investigate. Instead, they hire outside contractors: the players. The briefing is minimal. The payment is exceptional. The explanation for why the Collective is outsourcing what should be an internal security matter is not provided, which is itself alarming. The outpost was studying something the Collective calls a "deep signal” a periodic transmission of unknown origin emanating from the Dead Choir's heart.

When the players arrive at the outpost, they find it intact but silent. All Collective personnel — post-biological entities with no survival instinct and considerable combat capability — are present and unharmed. They are simply standing still, facing the same direction, broadcasting a single word on repeat in a language that predates every known civilization in the Spiral. Whatever the deep signal was, it said something back. And whatever answered the outpost's researchers are still in the system — close, patient, and interested in the new arrivals.

6. The Voss Prime Election

Voss Prime's planetary government has scheduled a historic election — a referendum on which faction, if any, should hold formal authority over the Cradle World's defense and foreign policy. It is framed as an act of self-determination. In practice, it is an arena: every major faction is running disinformation campaigns, funding proxy candidates, placing agents in the election commission, and in at least two documented cases, attempting to physically remove opposing candidates from the race. The planet's civilian population, exhausted by decades of being a political football, wants nothing more than a fair vote. This appears to be the one thing no one is prepared to give them.

The players are hired — their employer's identity and true agenda to be determined — to ensure the election's integrity. Or to ensure a specific outcome. Or both, by an employer who hasn't been entirely honest about the difference. As they wade into Voss Prime's political ecosystem, they discover that the stakes of the election extend beyond governance: buried in the voter registry database is evidence of something one faction has been doing on Voss Prime for twenty years — something that, if exposed, doesn't just change the election. It changes everything.

7. The Ember Veil Relic

A Kindred Reach elder — one of the oldest surviving members of a species that has lived in the Ember Veil for ten thousand years — approaches the players through an intermediary at Ironmonger Station. She does not offer money. She offers something rarer: trust, and knowledge. The trust: coordinates to a Precursor site deep in the Ember Veil, a location her people have guarded and kept secret for generations. The knowledge: the site contains something — she will not say what, only that her people call it the Remembered Voice — that must not fall into the hands of the Hegemony survey teams who are, at this moment, three weeks behind a navigational breakthrough that will bring them into the Veil's inner regions for the first time.

The players must navigate the Ember Veil — with its radiation, its plasma storms, its navigation hazards, and its beauty — reach the site before the Hegemony does, and then face the question that the elder has not answered: what do you do when you find something that everyone wants and that perhaps no one should have? The Kindred Reach's trust is not an abstraction. It is the most valuable thing anyone in the Reach has ever given the players. The weight of it will be felt.

8. An Offer from the Ash

A Hegemony Admiral — not a proxy, not an intermediary, but a flag officer with the authority to commit the Hegemony's resources and the reputation to back it up — requests a meeting with the players. The meeting is conducted in neutral space, on a civilian station, with no weapons and no recording devices and an honor code that the Admiral appears to mean sincerely. The offer: one job, clearly defined, with payment on completion that would solve every financial problem the players' crew has ever had and several they haven't thought of yet. The job: recover a specific item from a specific location. The item is not described as a weapon. The location is in the Fold Maze.

Everything about the Admiral's manner suggests she is telling the truth as she understands it. Everything about the operational parameters suggests the truth she understands may not be complete. As the players investigate the job before accepting or declining, they discover that the "specific item" is known to at least three other factions, all of whom are trying to acquire it simultaneously, and that the last team the Admiral sent to retrieve it didn't come back. The catch — the real catch — is that completing the job may hand the Hegemony something that makes the second Sundering War not just possible, but inevitable. The payment is real. The choice is real. There is no option that keeps everyone's hands clean.

PART VIII

Integrated Setting Themes

The Central Tension: Unity vs. Freedom

At the heart of the Star-Fury campaign lies a question that the galaxy has been failing to answer for four hundred years: is a fractured galaxy better than a unified one built on tyranny? The Hegemony of Ash offers the only serious answer in the direction of reunification — and the answer it offers is one that requires accepting brutality, surrendering autonomy, and trusting that the people holding the iron fist will use it justly. History offers very little support for that trust. The Free Stellar Confederacy offers the alternative: self-determination, democratic governance, the dignity of worlds choosing their own futures. And that alternative, in practice, produces chronic fragmentation, military weakness, and the persistent risk that the absence of order allows something even worse than the Hegemony to fill the vacuum.

This tension is not resolved in the setting — it cannot be resolved in the setting, because it reflects a real and unresolvable human question about the trade-off between safety and freedom, order and dignity. The campaign invites players to live inside that tension, to see its costs from multiple directions, and to make choices that reflect their own values rather than the campaign's predetermined answer. There may be a third way — something neither Hegemony reunification nor fractured independence, something the Precursor ruins and the Reach's diverse peoples might make possible — but finding it, if it exists at all, is the work of the campaign itself.

The Role of the Past: Promise and Warning

The Precursor ruins are not merely treasure to be looted or puzzles to be solved — they are the setting's primary moral object lesson. The Precursors built something extraordinary, achieved something that current civilization has not matched, and ended anyway. Their ruins are simultaneously a promise — this is what is possible — and a warning — this is what can be lost. The question of what destroyed them, which the campaign's mysteries will gradually approach without ever fully resolving, is not merely a historical puzzle. It is a mirror held up to the current civilization's own tensions: the arms races, the political fracturing, the temptation to use power without restraint because the crisis is real and the need is urgent.

The Sundering War performs the same function at a closer historical distance. It is the wound the galaxy is still living with — the trauma that every current political structure is simultaneously a response to and a perpetuation of. Every faction claims to be preventing the next Sundering while pursuing policies that make it more likely. The war is not over. It simply changed forms. The campaign will return to this again and again: in the veterans who carry it in their bodies, in the worlds that still bear its scars, in the weapons that still exist and the people who still want to use them.

What It Means to Be a Hero

In a fractured galaxy, heroism does not look like saving the world. The world is too big, too broken, and too far gone for any small group of people to fix in the space of a campaign. What heroes can do — what this campaign's player characters are positioned to do — is save people: one crew, one world, one choice at a time. The scope of heroism is intimate, even when its consequences are vast. A decision to protect a Kindred elder and her people's sacred site does not end the Hegemony's expansionism. But it means that those people survive, that something sacred is preserved, that the world contains slightly more of what is worth fighting for. That matters. The campaign insists that it matters.

Heroes in the Shattered Reach are also accountable heroes. Their choices have consequences that extend beyond the immediate scene, beyond the current arc, beyond their intentions. A weapon sold in desperation becomes someone else's atrocity. An alliance made for survival entangles the crew in obligations they didn't anticipate. The campaign does not punish players for trying — it never punishes players for trying — but it maintains the integrity of a world in which actions have weight. Heroism costs something. The characters who pay that cost with their eyes open, who choose it anyway, are the campaign's truest protagonists.

The Shattered Reach as Metaphor

The Shattered Reach is many things: a setting, a political arena, a frontier, a mystery. It is also a metaphor — perhaps the campaign's central one. It is a broken place. Its stars are dead. Its navigation charts are unreliable. Its history is violent and its present is unstable. By every conventional measure, it should be abandoned: too dangerous, too difficult, too costly to inhabit and defend.

And yet people live here. Species native to the Reach stayed when they could have fled. Refugees came when they had nowhere else to go. Dreamers came because a broken place has no entrenched power to tell them their dreams are impossible. The Reach is broken — and in its brokenness, in the gaps between the powers and the ruins between the stars, something new is always trying to grow. Communities form in the shadow of Precursor megastructures. Languages blend at Ironmonger's crossroads markets. Kindred species and displaced refugees and eccentric colonists build things together that wouldn't have been possible in the orderly, surveilled, categorized space of the old Compact. The Shattered Reach is, in the end, a place of possibility precisely because it is a place of ruin. New things grow in the ruins. This is what the campaign believes. This is what it is about: the long, difficult, costly, necessary work of growing something worth having in the ruins of what was lost — and refusing to stop, even when the dark is very dark indeed.

APPENDIX

Quick Reference

Setting at a Glance

Element	Detail
Galaxy	The Aetherion Spiral (~400 billion stars)
Era	The Age of Fractured Stars (began ~400 years ago)
Stardate / Year	77,492 / 4289 CE
Region of Focus	The Shattered Reach (~3,000 star systems)
FTL Method	Dimensional Fold Drive
Fold Limitations	Requires high energy, exotic materials, and precise navigation data. Unreliable near gravitational anomalies, dense nebulae, and the Shattered Reach's spatial distortions. Precursor waypoints or smuggler charts required in the Fold Maze.
Tech Level	Mature Star faring — interstellar travel, megastructures, AI, genetic engineering, planetary terraforming, energy weapons
Precursor Legacy	Extinct civilization; ruins galaxy-wide; highest concentration in the Shattered Reach; technology capable of tipping galactic balance

Major Factions — Summary

Faction	One-Line Summary
Hegemony of Ash	Authoritarian successor state; seeks galactic reunification by force; the largest conventional military in the Reach.
Free Stellar Confederacy (FSC)	Democratic alliance of independent worlds; champions self-determination; politically fragmented but morally coherent.
Voidborn Syndicate	Criminal-corporate megastate; profits from chaos; plays all sides; arms dealing, piracy, and information brokerage.
Remnant Church of the Eternal Fold	Religious institution venerating the Fold as sacred; controls key waypoints; pursues Precursor prophecy on its own timeline.
Mechanist Collective	Post-biological civilization of human-machine hybrids; technological supremacists; seeks Precursor transcendence tech.
Kindred Reach	Coalition of native and displaced alien species; fiercely protective of the Reach; unmatched local knowledge and guerrilla capability.
Ghost Fleet Command	Decentralized network of ex-Compact officers, veterans, and rogue AI warships; morally ambiguous; pursues its own vision of restored order.

Key Locations in the Shattered Reach

Location	Type	Significance
Ironmonger Station	Independent trading hub (dead star remnant)	The Reach's crossroads; neutral ground; center of commerce, espionage, and desperate employment.
Voss Prime	Cradle World (habitable planet)	Most contested real estate in the Reach; multi-faction struggle for governance authority.
The Precursor Spire	Precursor megastructure (rogue planet)	Active, poorly understood, recently awakened; coveted by all factions; potentially the most important site in the known galaxy.
The Ember Veil	Sub-region (brilliant nebula)	Stellar remnants of the Sundering; beautiful and deadly; Kindred sacred sites; Precursor ruins.
The Dead Choir	Sub-region (depopulated systems)	Mysteriously emptied worlds; anomalous signals; Mechanist Collective experiments; unknown danger.
The Fold Maze	Sub-region (spatial anomaly zone)	Near-impassable without specialized charts; Remnant Church waypoints; ultimate navigational challenge.
The Cradle Worlds	Sub-region (habitable systems)	Survivors of the Sundering; primary prize in Hegemony-FSC Cold War; civilian populations in the crossfire.

The Ten Genre Pillars — Listed

1. Space Opera Grandeur

2. Frontier Exploration

3. Moral Ambiguity

4. Ancient Mysteries

5. Political Intrigue

6. Found Family & Crew Dynamics

7. War & Its Costs

8. Technological Wonder & Peril

9. Outlaw Freedom

10. Hope Against the Dark

Star-Fury Over the Shattered Nebula — Campaign World Guide — The Aetherion Spiral — Stardate 77,492 / 4289 CE
For use at the Game Master's table. All factions, locations, and events are original fictional constructs.
The stars are broken. Begin.

Dor Stryker, Official Mascot of Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery

2026-06-09T08:48:28.009-06:00

GUNSLINGERS! Formally known as Western USR

2026-06-08T14:26:48.209-06:00

The PDF digital copy of GUNSLINGERS! is now available from the press!

This is a total redo of the old Western USR rulebook. 79 pages includes gambling rules, heroic meta-currency, called shot modifiers, critical hits tables, and an introductory gunfight; Shoot Out at the OK Corral!

Yeah why not. Only the most famous gunfight of all time. Stats are provided for all participants with an opportunity to play on both sides!

There will be a POD version, but I am waiting on the cover art. This is being done by a real person so the cost of this will outstrip any sale by a long shot. So don't get upset over the AI art on the interior. Times are tight.

Savage Tales of Xoth, The Headsman's Debt

2026-06-03T21:56:48.819-06:00

The first chapter of Dor Stryker is now written. 2,600 words of pulpy goodness as a try and complete Lester Dent's pulp formula for writing seriels.

THE HEADSMAN'S DEBT

from the Chronicals of Xoth

“The sword remembers every neck it has kissed.”

— Proverb of the Sword Sisters of Khazrahj

The drum beat came before dawn. Dor heard it from the rooftop where she slept — a flat expanse of cracked limestone wrapped in her cloak, above the Street of Copper Lamps, where the smell of tallow and wine drifted from warm cobblestones below. She lay on her side, one hand on the hilt of the long blade next to her, unsheathed, naked of adornment, and unlike any other. Three strokes, pause, three strokes. It rolled across the awakening city like a stone cast into still water. Dogs could be heard yelping, and their master’s then scolding.

Zhul-Bazzir squatted at the junction of two caravan roads and the banks of the Sorrowing River — a city of yellow stone and ambition and rot, its minarets rising from a base of accumulated squalor . Flowers sprouting from a dung-heap. The Grand Inquisitor, Massad Ul-Khet, had held the city for eleven years. In that time, the headsman's yard had never gone cold. Stone-paved, drain-channeled, sluiced each evening with grey river water, running red before it ran clear — the yard behind the Palace of Corrections was the true heart of Zhul-Bazzir, the place where the Inquisitor's theology was written in a language everyone understood. Dor Stryker has been the yard's master author for the last three.

She rose, rubbed her face, stroked the fracture along her nose which marred her otherwise comely appearance, and tied back her oiled black hair. She relaced her high leather boots and buckled her corselet over bare skin, strapped on her belt sheath. She flicked her sword deftly into it and climbed down before the echo of the drum had fully died.

II.

The condemned was already kneeling at the block when Dor arrived. A crowd had gathered in the grey predawn — merchants, harlots, off-duty soldiers, the idle poor — drawn by the drum as they always were. They pressed against the low iron rails and watched with the frank curiosity of a people long accustomed to public death.

Dor noticed the prisoner's hands first. The knuckles were scarred in a pattern she knew: the callus ridge where a sword's grip meets the first two fingers, built by a thousand mornings of drilling. A fighter's hands, bound at the wrist with cord rather than chain. The Inquisitor's bailiffs had underestimated their captive or been paid to.

Then Dor came around the block and saw the face.

The prisoner was forty years old, with burnt-bronze skin and hooded eyes. Her hair had been shorn indicating a freshly taken slave, but the cant of her shoulders, the way she held the back of her neck against the pressure of the guard's hand — these weren’t slave-postures. These were postures Dor had learned in the training yards of the Sisterhood decades ago, from a woman who had beaten those lessons into her with a length of oiled cord and a practiced contempt for weakness.

The prisoner turned her head and Dor met her eyes.

The recognition struck like a cold blade through the heart.

Maret. Senior-Blade Maret of the Seventh Company. The woman who had once stood between a fifteen-year-old Dor and the anger of a training-master who believed broken bones were pedagogy.

Maret did not smile. She inclined her head —and Dor was uprooted, not understanding. The absence of begging; the unbowed calm not resignation, something more deliberate. A Sword Sister going to the blade the way a Sword Sister should, no this is not what unmoored her from her present place, present duties.

“Why here, why this?”

Dor breathed once through her nose and took her position.

“Why are you here sister?” This time she said it aloud, like steel pulled against the whetstone.

III.

The Inquisitor's deputy, a liver-spotted functionary named Ozeh, read the charges from a wax tablet in a reedy voice. He found satisfaction in his words and uttered crisp and polished sentences. Conspiracy against the throne. Harboring enemies of the Inquisitor's peace. Sedition through the distribution of the Sisterhood's "martial catechism” - a document Dor had herself been required to memorize before she knew what language was, though it contained nothing more seditious than advice on sword-grip and the obligation of a warrior to die on her feet.

The crowd listened, thirsty for misfortunes which were not their own.

Ozeh finished his recitation and looked at her with the expectant expression of a man who had arranged everything properly and expected others to perform their function just as properly. Lost in the poetry of his own blather, it was obvious he was unaware Dor was addressing the condemned slave before her.

The crowd was still. The drum had gone silent. Over the rooftops of Zhul-Bazzir, the first suffusions of prayer bled into the yellowing sky.

“Why are you here?” Dor hissed vehemently.

Maret's neck, exposed by the shorn scalp, was steady above the block's worn crescent.

“What makes you think I won’t break one oath over another sister?” she spoke again, angrily.

Ozeh looked back to his tablet and then up from his tablet. The absence of the singing blade followed by a wet, shearing thump had awakened him from his indulgence of the law, and its placement on others like a soap bubble snapped in the breeze.

“Finish the sentence,” Ozeh said. He struggled to comprehend his nicely ordered execution had come off the rails.

Dor rolled her right shoulder, testing the familiar weight of the execution blade — not her own sword belted at her side, but the instrument kept in the Palace's armory: a thick-spined, single-edged weapon of practical design, as devoid of beauty as a carpenter's adze. She had used it often enough that her body held the motion without thinking. The angle. The weight-shift. The exhale timed to the drop.

Dor raised the blade.

The single clear note of it — the whisper of displaced air as the weapon reached the apex — was the sound Dor associated with a precise, irreversible moment. Before a thing was done that could not be undone. She had heard it three hundred times and it had never meant anything except the final step of a process.

She held it there. One heartbeat. Two.

The crowd began to murmur.

IV.

Dor lowered the blade.

The sound that went through the yard was not loud — a collective intake of breath, the shift of sixty bodies registering the same confusion. The two guards flanking the bound Maret exchanged a glance.

“No.”

The word came out as flat and unremarkable as cobblestones, and it fell into the silence with the same solidity. Dor rested the execution blade across her left shoulder and turned to face the deputy. She was aware of how she appeared to the crowd: tall, deliberate, the dawn-light catching the brass fittings of her corselet. Her hardened body balanced on the lightness of a raptor's readiness. The end of another executioner's tenur in the service of Zhul-Bazzir.

“This is the Inquisitor's lawful sentence,” Ozeh said. His voice had climbed half an octave. “You are the Inquisitor's lawful instrument. You will—”

“The charge is distribution of the Sisterhood catechism,” Dor said with overblown disgust. “The catechism is a training document. Its oldest version predates Massad Ul-Khet's authority over this city by four hundred years. Executing a woman for possessing it is not law. It is the Inquisitor erasing his critics.”

She said this loudly. She said this loudly on purpose.

The crowd was very still now — the stillness of people who are watching something consequential and do not yet know whether to flee.

Ozeh's face had moved through surprise and landed on something pale and calculating. “Seize her,” he said quietly to the guards.

The guards were experienced men. They did not look at each other this time. They looked at Dor — at the execution blade still resting on her shoulder, her long blade at her hip. They had witnessed three years of her cold killing at the block. There was a pause that lasted one heartbeat longer than Ozeh intended.

Maret, still kneeling at the block, said, “Go, sword-sister. And consider your oath fulfilled.”

Dor looked at her.

Maret's face was a mocking smile. How could Dor anticipate her debt would be called so suddenly, unexpectently. But called it has and in an instant all she had careful constructed over three lonely years was ruined.

Dor drove her elbow into the nearest guard’s jaw, then struck the second across the neck with the broad edge of the executioner’s blade. As blood sprayed from the severed stump, she pivoted and brought the heavy sword down in a two-handed arc, cutting through the other guard’s leather byrnie and deep into his shoulder. His spear slipped from numb fingers as he screamed and fell dead. Dor then sprinted for the Street of Copper Lamps.

She went over three rooftops and down an oil-seller’s outside stair before a serious pursuit organized itself. Zhul-Bazzir was a city she had walked for several years at the Inquisitor's pleasure, and she had done so with the professional attention to neighborhoods a person who killed for work would cultivate.

She did not return to her lodgings. She did not go to the stable where her Karrax riding-beast was kept. She went instead to the arena in the tanners' quarter — a deep-cellared ring with open seating. She descended stone steps to the animal stalls. It stank of waste, wet straw, and carrion. The game keeper, a foul slob of a brute with more hair on his back than words in his skull, sat gapped-kneed on a stool eating something that was cooked on a stick. He didn’t say anything until Dor reached the gate of a fierce hill-cat. A green and yellow striped predator from the far south. Vicious killers, the game house sedates them before every match so as not to kill too many expensive and popular gladiators before they earn enough gold. This one was sleeping off last night’s dose. Its bloodstained muzzle and claws testified to the great cat’s past performance.

“What do you think you are doing Stryker?” The game keeper had stopped eating. Deciding whether to stand up. He did not want to set down his plate.

“The Patar Marter wants to see the beast. Evaluate it before its next performance.” Dor answered as she gathered up a Banthen riding harness and saddle.

“Just take the lead and the whip. You don’t need a harness. No one told me Vigna was going out this morning.”

“Kalo, how long have you known me?”

This was a truly epic calculation for Kalo to make, and the way he tugged his beard meant he was getting mad because he was no longer eating. “Not long, I don’t think.”

“And you are always worried I’m not supposed to being doing what I’m doing when I’m down here right?”

“Yeah, like the time you tried to spike that Gargak before its match. I got beaten bad for that.”

“Well, they are going to beat you much worse for this.”

Before Kalo could react, let alone stop Dor from doing what she was doing, Dor had planted her booted foot swiftly into his groin. As he doubled over in agony Dor followed with a brutal uppercut which snapped the game keeper’s head back. Kalo fell in a haze of pain and delirium.

After she had Kalo adequately bound with rope, Dor started fitting the Banthen riding harness on the drugged cat. She had to kick it several times in the ribs to get it to stand up to finish the kit’s bindings. The creature growled, annoyed and hungry but still compliant from the heavy dose of lotus it had been given hours earlier. With a sack of dried meat and a large water bag tied behind the saddle she led the great green-maned cat up the ramp into the empty arena floor.

continued here?

AI at the Vanishing Tower

2026-06-02T20:43:02.775-06:00

I was playing around with AI recently and see if it could fulfill publishing roles for Vanishing Tower Press. Help me get better products out the door faster. I got some great results at the boiler-plate level of product management. Sometimes it helps to have someone tell you what they think you should do. But only if the source has valuable information. Hence AI as a new way to aggregate useful information in ways you can then use in creative ways.

Couple of things I have used it for over the last couple of days:

Space Acid; my space opera retro-clone had serious mechanical issues which plagued the overall use of the book. Considering the source material, no surprise. I had AI review the manuscript and rationalize the mechanics. I asked it to attack the text as a copy editor and playtester would. Gave some good suggestions on how to accomplish this. Gave me enough enthusiasm to start rewriting the impacted sections. Having some sense of how to get out of the box I was writing myself into. Asking what kind of vibe it gets from reading the text can give me decent enough feedback to see if I am getting my idea across in a coherent matter. Asking it to expose weakness in the text the software handles with ease as well as any editor would that you paid. And have the edits back in your hands in a minute, I'm re-writing drafts in real time with some professional critique.

A road map, a refresher course on how a publishing house, no matter how small an ameature and hacky, can go about and make the best product they can. It produced this for me in seconds. I'll attach it here through a link if you care to review it. I'm not saying the output has tremendouse value, but getting even this level of detail out of myself would be hours and hours of work. Which wouldn't make any sense. Because the results I got have me doing what I expected. Hours and hours of editing, and writing, and designing on the publishing software. Which is where I need to be spending my time if I am going to get anything done.

The other task I have it going into is formatting tables so I don't have to build each one in my layout document. This always takes me a long time manually, constructing the table styles, paragraph styles, and character styles. I've got some more learning to do, but I think I can get AI to do these tasks for me within the actual program. Formating press releases and customer email corrispondance, these will be intersting to see how these can be intergrated.

Not to try and grow the business in any grandstanding way. This project is spurred on by a desire to understand what is going on around me in the tech world. That is what VTP is all about. Interacting with the world through a creative hobby. One that has real people interaction at the core.

Any tool which gets me in the chair to actually write, I get exited about that.

Another challange I want to throw at it is editing audio from recorded game sessions for snappy playback. Doing that with my audio software suite is hours of work. I am over it. But I want that tight audio damn it. If it can skin a session as good as did then I could get more episodes up on a regular schedule on the podcast. When I could put months of play in easy to listen to back to back episodes there are people who enjoyed that. And I enjoyed the infrequent feedback. Makes it all the more fun.

New Company Logo

2026-05-30T07:56:45.798-06:00

Vanishing Tower Press has a new publishers logo. Actually, I have two to choose from. I am at a loss which one is better? Here, take a look and tell me what you think.

Different System, Different Genres, Same Game?

2026-05-08T08:58:00.381-06:00

Running different games with different groups of players has allowed me to “self-populate” these same game worlds with ongoing, behind the scenes world building which may be the holy grail of what I am after with TTRPG’s. World building by borrowing elements from other campaign games I have or am currently running. For example, in my Blood of Heroes bronze age comics game PCs encountered “Trans-Arcana Radiation”. In my Traveller games PCs can uncover disturbances in the “G Band” which will lead to “secrets of the ancients”. If any of these characters have a chance to compare analysis, they are the same thing. So what are the wizards wielding in Rom’Myr. Some might call it magic, but at the scientific level it is the same. G Band disturbance, physics-defying radiation, pure Vancian magic… its all Trans-Arcana Radiation in these wildly different games.

Once I started tinkering with this idea it was only a short jump to keep PC events and encounters in play from other games. My next Traveller game will have built in the fallout from previous groups’ play. Since those previous groups were poking around in the “Secrets of the Ancients”, I now have built-in ramifications which can occur in the background of any new group’s actions and inclinations. Cosmic-scale occurrences and planet-shattering events are daily occurrences in your average comic book stories. The phenomena and powers encountered in my supers campaign give a bridge to walk over into my fantasy campaign, without even getting lost!

The Faceless Howl Kabuki Kaiser 2

2026-05-07T15:36:43.700-06:00

Well the whole damn thing worked out. Here is how. Go with the crazy. And be willing to convert on the fly without much agonizing whether you got it right or not. Conversion you say? Yes, while I used the adventure material to run the session, we are also playing my game Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery DUSRSS), which is much different than the traditional d20, 6 attributes and a class type game systems. But you need to be good at this if you ae going to use any outside adventure material from other games. Which will be everything if you are playing DUSRSS.

The Howl is another great example of quality adventure content available for peanuts from independent creators these days. As a Crypt Keeper, I know I do not need another version of the rule book. I need nightmare fuel to feed the campaign beast. Adding outside material is an essential part of my job at the table. The trouble is where do you find great stuff in a landscape of AI trash and poorly thought out ideas which made it to print? If you are playing Old-school DnD I recommend Bryce Lynche's adventure review blog Ten Foot Pole. He has you covered with curated lists of some really dope stuff.

Howl gives the right amount of intriguing detail and evocative writing so the DM can convey the feel of the place quickly and adroitly. There are factions in the village which further define the environment, opening up multiple avenues of play. This is one of the features of the good stuff available these days. Creators understand the importance of factions being played out in a living game world. In fact, factions make a campaign setting so much more then geography and scale. And you can run the adventure adequately at the table with the book in hand. But not recommended.

Read the entire adventure before you decide how to use it, how it will fit into the game world if called. The nuance and hooks written inside the adventure will allow you to find the adventure's rightful place in your pantcampaign. But you are going to want to meditate and let the pieces jell. I didn't give myself that opportunity. I used the adventure with only preliminary reading of the content. This situation and site location offer many possibilites in any fantasy setting.

So I read hard and fast and we ended up with a nice nagical trip into the shadow world for a game session which would have been otherwise cancelled. What emerged was an adventure I used on the fly and found it easy enough to parse so I could make it "fit" into the current game and enough cool stuff going on (think factions) that even if the plot of the module was not the plot of my players I could use the adventure premise as a whole and shave where needed. I found the adventure intriguing. If you are looking for PCs to come across a town with problems, this adventure is a good pick.

World of Xoth Campaign Update

2026-04-23T08:15:32.366-06:00

Here is another installment of the PCs own game notes of the adventure so far;

Having gone through the dream quest given to me by my god Yaddar the god of secrets I have met a new ally her name is Frisco Shans she appears to be some sort of hunter who can commune with raccoons I think they're her spirit animal it is unnerving to see this but it’s no doubt a handy ability.

During this dream quest we ended up fighting our way through at large stone keep encountering many strange and wondrous things within its black stone walls. Globes that imparted knowledge but blasted our minds at the same time, driving us to madness, a strange haggard sphinx like creature that tried to give us riddles in return for safe passage but it seemed that its mind was broken and it just repeated the same riddle over and over again and no matter how we answered we still fell under the baleful influence of its strange black jewelled necklace which forced into our minds a bloodthirsty rage that meant we attacked each until the pain snapped us out of its baleful influence. We also came across huge grotesque corpse pale worms which seemed to be guarding a deep pit that went through the floor of one of the rooms, but we decided to that it was safer to bypass these terrible creatures.

We managed to sneak past them and into a destroyed library where we found the object of our quest the mask of Nerm, I do not know what this item does, but it must be important if my God sent me into this terrible shadow realm.

It was a shame that we had lost the brave Knight that we had met at the gates of this terrible place, Belmont the Gryphon knight it seemed he was never to return home and we saw no sign of Yarms bejewelled gauntlet but after recovering the mask of Nerm we decided to leave before we met the same fate. The final room held a strange creature half cat half chandelier, which transformed into a terrible feline knight armed and armoured and ready to spill blood. Fortunately, we successfully negotiated with her, and she permitted us to exit the chamber.

Once we were able to leave her rooms, we were blinded by an immense brightness which drove us to our knees, with tears streaming from our eyes. And then after what felt like years we both awoke to find ourselves in a dirty back alley somewhere in the village of Hirot, back where we had begun but now, we have the mask.

Luckily much to the surprise of Genn who over almost stumbled over us while he was making his way to the village gates to speak to Nothan the sergeant of the night watch. He had been told by Brogan the innkeeper that this man is someone we could trust and after a hurried conversation it seemed to be true as Morgan was betrothed to him. He was able to convince a couple of other guards to come with us telling them it was better to fight than to await death by the Beast. So, with strong allies and the supplies given to us by Brogan we headed out into the rain swept woods towards the sacred circle to rescue Morgan before she could be sacrificed to the Beast.

Leaving the village was fairly easy now and we made all haste to the sacrificial circle hoping to get there before the Beast could take its grim payment and as we made our way through the dark woods through the rain it seemed that the gods smiled upon us as we seemed to be in time, as the beautiful young lady woman was still chained to one of the mighty stones which made up the circle. When she saw us and Nothan jogging towards her she cried out telling us to get back. She was a brave woman, willing to sacrifice herself for the man and village she loved, but we were set on our course and we would not hear of such a thing and so breaking her chains we told her to head back to her father but then from out of the dark woods we heard growls so deep they that made our bone shake and suddenly, impossibly the Beast appeared.

As we were told it took the form of a mighty wolf, bigger than a horse, its eyes blazing red with hunger and the promise of painful death. It's claws causing sparks to fly as it moved across the rocky ground of the circle.

And then suddenly battle was joined, one of the guards took Morgan and fled towards the village whilst the other two made ready buy them time and we also drew our weapons to battle the Beast and sell our lives dearly. It seemed that even though we had done our best to prepare for this moment we were still not ready to defeat this creature as its unholy vigour made it immune to our weapons. And all looked lost until the oil and flaming brands were thrown. The fire and flame were able to drive the Beast back and the purity of the fire did much damage it. The Beasts body now soaked in burning oil caused it to howl in pain, unfortunately the flames meant that we could not use the magic of the net as we feared that flames would destroy it but fortunately the flames were enough to drive the beast back. It's oil-soaked fur burning now like some great bonfire and with righteous fury slowly destroying its physical form but not it's spirit.

As when its body collapsed into a flaming mass, a shadowy mist with a foul-smelling odour escaped the burning body. This mist seemed to form a howling wolfs face before it was whipped away by the wind towards the marshes. We were victorious and had learned vital clues about the Beast, it may be immune to normal weapons, but it was not immune to fire. Though the battles was won it had cost us much, A guard was dead his body ripped asunder and his entrails were now strewn across the sacrificial stones and some of our party were wounded in the battle but with the Beast only driven away we still had to make sure it wouldn't come back. We needed weapons, weapons that could fight and destroy the Beast. So, with Morgan hopefully heading back towards the village and the safety of her father. We decided to head to the Serpent mound, the tomb of Ulfheonar where this had all started when those grave robbing fools had tried to enter it all those days ago. Thus, releasing the Beast to cause havoc and to punish those who had not stopped them.

So, after bandaging ourselves up and taken a swig or two from the flasks of hard liquor given to us by Brogan, we convinced one of the guards to at least take us close to the forbidden tomb.

So, we headed to the tomb in search of the legendary Wolf spear a weapon so deadly, so blessed by the gods it would surely send the Beast straight back to the underworld.

After around an hour or so of hacking through the ever-present brambles and the pouring rain we arrive at the clearing of the Serpent tomb it sat alone and it was truly a forbidding site even nature itself seemed to give it a wide berth, there was no sound of birds or insects in the surrounding area and even the moonlight seemed afraid to shine upon its cursed form. And so, the clearing itself was somehow darker than the surrounding woods. We searched the exterior and quickly found a strong door. It was still secured and it was covered in strange sigils, but there was no sign that it had ever been opened. Then one of us cried out, it seemed that the nearby stream had been diverted by time and the water had broken through one of the walls washing away the dirt and carving a channel through the stones. It wasn't much but it was enough for us to crawl through and gain entry into the tomb beyond.

This seems to be the same way that the tomb robbers had entered the tomb as well as we found pieces of fabric trapped by the thorns of the bramble bushes which ripped through clothing and skin with equal ease. So, after a tense moment or two where we had to submerge ourselves into this river to get into the tomb, we finally found ourselves inside a room. It was made-up of huge stone slabs mortared together with mud and dirt the stone walls were covered in strange paintings of serpents and writing that we could not decipher, lighting our torches we moved deeper into the tomb soon finding ourselves in a labyrinth of stone corridors. We were not sure which way to go and then a scuttling was heard and before we had time to prepare, we were attacked by the undead. No normal undead were these unfortunate creatures but human bodies hollowed out and controlled somehow by massive serpents that sprang from the dead bodies as we chopped them down.

Again, we were strongly pressed finding ourselves fighting for our lives but after taking some grievous wounds we were able to dispose of the undead as well as the strange snakes that inhabited them. The snakes did not just deal physical damage though as their bite carried a terrible poison and we could only hope that the medicinal herbs carried by the strange hunter Frisco Shans would be enough to counter the effects of this poison as that would be no way for hero to die. So, with the first attack defeated we gathered ourselves and again began to move deeper into the tomb.

Review of The Faceless Howl part one

2026-03-31T19:30:00.003-06:00

Kabuki Kaiser was most generous to provide me a copy of his latest adventure. I am really thrilled to offer my opinion once finished reading. Unfortunately, at this time, I am unable to review after a playthrough. The Faceless Howl is a 42-page sword and sorcery nightmare for Many Sought Adventure and other OSR games, and concerns PCs stumbling into the trouble to be found in a troubled village. And I enjoy having a good catalogue of this village is suffering... scenarios on hand. But I am using one currently. DCC's Doom of the Savage Kings...

and then one of the PCs couldn't make the session and an old player resurfaced and I immediately grabbed The Faceless Howl off the shelf and contrived reasons for this material to fit into the current happenings in the game. The one thread I have to work is with the current player who hits all the sessions. Not his character though. No, he is on a new PC, but this is the second time in so many adventure arcs the price of success/aid is with dedicating oneself to marriage with the patron dispensing the goods. I decided there is a contest between the gods (as there always is) which requires mortal betrothal with a magical being.

Here is the PC Jacque, Knight of Jet's perspective of the insertion of this adventure material on the fly..

We enter the shadow realm of dreams and gods, and must enter the transformed Jarls' hall, which is now a mighty Keep, to recover the Mask of Nerm. Jaques is at first scared by this realm of shadows and the lack of colour, but is relieved to come across a beautiful woman who seems to know her way around this monochrome realm. She swaggers up and introduces herself as Frisco Shans, a hunter, and she seems to have expected to meet Jaques. So, with some suspicion but believing that this has something to do with his god Yadar, he agrees to team up with this wild woman. We then head towards the black yet gleaming curtain wall of the Keep and begin climbing up the broken statue-lined slope which leads to the Keep's massive gateway, and where we meet an armoured figure standing patiently by the open gates as if waiting for us. We approach slowly, ready for combat, but the figure greets us warmly and introduces himself as Sir Belamont, a knight of the Order of the Gryphon. And he is very glad to see us. He believes we have been sent to aid him in his quest to recover the infamous bejeweled gauntlet. This artefact will enable him to return home after many years of questing. So after a brief talk, we agreed to help him as it seemed the easiest way to get into the Keep and its Libarium for the item we needed. Gaining entry to the Keep is suspiciously easy, but as we cross the threshold, the temperature drops, as well as the portcullis; it seems we are now locked into recovering these artefacts, as well as the Libarium..

I am channeling the Shadow Plane from Moorcock's first book in his Elric series. Also the idea of different "champions" of the gods uniting to aid each other in similar goals I am lifting right from Moorcock as well. The second book in the Elric series, called Sailing on the Seas of Fate, has multiple versions of the same champion uniting into a single group dedicated to completing a deadly mission on behalf of the gods. So I'm working with competing nuptials in some mad contest of the gods involving the PCs (living and dead) for some greater goal. If I play faithful to genre tropes this should leave the main characters of the story doomed, with minds shredded and bones jellied. But this is roleplaying games so there must be an avenue of success. An opportunity to beat the odds and somehow win out.

How is the module working? Organized well to be able to use at the table very fast. This is because of the adventures layout. Large titles, bullet points and terse, evocative text gives a Game Master a decent chance of keeping the encounter coherent while leaning into the adventure's original features.

What are these features? I'll give my thoughts after this week's game session. We should finish the adventure and so I won't be giving out any spoilers.

Chronicals of Xoth, Handful of Stars Session Report

2026-03-04T19:28:00.003-07:00

The latest description of recent events of the campaign as described by Jaques, one of the PCs;

We flee from Khadar city and head into the hills. As we climb higher into the mountains, we come across a mixed column of militia and villagers, who are taking a young woman (Morgan) to a stone circle. After talking to a few of the villagers, we find out that the young woman is to be sacrificed to a demon hound, saving the lives of the other villagers.

We decide to get involved, so unable to fight the guards decide to head back to their village to gather more information. The village is called Hirot. The large man we saw leading the column is the Jarl of the village; he is worn but still a bear of a man, especially when clad in his armour and wolf pelt and he leads a small group of similarly armored men.

Heading into the somber village, we see that some of the buildings look to have been destroyed by something, and there are not a lot of people out in the streets, and the whole village seems to be under a cloud of despair. So we quickly make our way to the squat and solidly built Inn, The Sign of the Wolf Spear

The Inn is owned by a man called Brogan, who is also the father of Morgan . We ask the few tired patrons about the sacrifice and are told about a group of adventurers who came through several weeks ago, who claimed to be searching for the tomb of a mighty warlord named Ulfheonar. The tomb is shaped like a vast serpent and contains vast wealth and a mighty weapon of immense power. Those we talked to say that they must have failed and released the tomb's guardian, a demon hound, a hound that now stalks them. Nothing seems to be able to stop it, not walls, not guards, not the Jarl or the Priest. The hound was smashing its way into homes and ripping apart families and coating whole sections of the village in blood. None of those who attempted to fight back or track it survived.

The Jarl now hides in his hall along with what remains of his guard, and his seer Syliler Ru, the man who came up with the sacrifice draw. Some of the villagers hide in the Chapel with the insane Priest Beacom, who was driven to despair and thus madness. He now believes that the only salvation is through the mortification of the flesh. His chapel is now filled with people whipping themselves until the blood flows from their ragged backs, as the Priest has told them that only through their blood and suffering can the beast be appeased.

The Inn isn't the only place to stay, as there is a shelter called the Three Rats, which seems to be aptly named. So far, we have had no reason to go there, finding the Wolf Spear more to our tastes.

So, hearing the villagers' tales, we committed to helping them as much as we could, knowing that we would get no help from the broken Jarl. We began to make plans. We now know that the tomb is to the north of the village, whilst the demon dog heads to the swamps to the northeast after it's kills, and both may need to be investigated. The Priest is spoken to, but Beecom believes that only by the mortification of the flesh can the hound be stopped. As his god Justica has told him that this and the surrendering of all earthly wealth is the only way to wash away their sins and get her protection.

The ancient chapel has a beautiful stained glass window which shows Justica defeating this demon hound using a mighty warhammer. This hammer still exists but is kept in the chapel waiting for the worthy; the Priest will not use it nor will he let others. The Priest has two acolytes who help him guard the hammer and are half-crazed due to them constantly whipping themselves.

Genn stays at the Inn, gathering more information about the lottery, the Seer and the Priest and learns that some suspect that the hound is not a demon but rather a real creature trained by someone. When asked why someone would do this, he is told that scared people are easier to control and those who had the means to leave have left, leaving only the lost and desperate in the village awaiting their fate.

Jacques leaves in search of a large net and is told that the widow Yamay is the best weaver for miles around, and if anyone could make a net strong enough to hold the hound, it would be her. Knocking at her hut, he is met by an old crone, and it becomes quickly evident that she is much more than just an old woman. She knows a lot about the situation and tells Jacques that she can indeed make a net strong enough to hold the hound, but she will need something in return, and what she wants is a husband. Jacques is taken aback somewhat but agrees as he sees that she is old like him, and it wouldn't be a long marraige and he could end up with some money and a home. Also, if he survives the hound, the villagers and Jarl would surely be grateful. Yamay laughing gets up from in front of her fire and reaches up to the roof beams and begins to pull down withered heads. She removes the few strands of hair that still cling to their dead flesh and begins to turn the wheel, weaving the hair into a large net as a now worried Jacques looks on in horror.

Genn, meanwhile, has arranged to get some supplies, including a lot of flammable material and, more importantly, a few others who will help us fight this creature. He also manages to get us a way to leave the village after the gates are closed, as one of the Jarl's men who guards the gate is in love with Morgan, his daughter (the woman currently chained to one of the standing stones) and can be convinced to help. The young man's name is Nothan of the night watch.

The village adventure comes with a priest, so I needed to add a new go

JUSTICA, THE IRON SCALES God of the Susrahn Hillmen Origins & Nature Before the great river-cities of Susrahn rose their ziggurat temples to gods of grain and celestial fire, the hill clans of the interior highlands worshipped older, crueler powers. Justica is the eldest of these — not a god of justice as the civilized lowlanders might understand the word, but of primal reckoning: the inexorable settling of debts, the balancing of blood for blood, the grinding inevitability of consequence. He is imagined as a colossal figure carved from black mountain granite, his face expressionless and featureless save for two hollow pits where eyes should be. In one hand he holds a great set of scales fashioned from iron and bone. In the other, a flint-headed maul the size of a war-elephant. He does not pursue. He does not rage. He simply waits, and the scales always come level in the end. The hillmen say he was old when the world was young — that he watched the giant-kings raise their cyclopean fortresses and said nothing, knowing their ledger would one day balance. It did.

The 3D6 Seven, Nine, Eleven, Thirteen, Fifteen Spread

2026-03-04T14:21:00.003-07:00

These are your degree of difficulty, failure, and success array built into the first fantasy roleplaying game, and has been returned to again and again by modern game design to leverage the powerful resolution mechanic it is.

This is your yes, but; yes, and; no you fucking die "complication" written into this bell-curve and is at least the core mechanic of the Hero System. It is easy to appreciate. Seven thru fifteen is a tight spread you can expect to land somewhere in on an "average" basis, and has enough shade to not seem completely binary.

Difficulty Class is set on a less swingy basis when using 3D6 than if a D20 is rolled, but still chance rules and there is tension built into each roll, which is routinely exploited at the table for the better enjoyment of all. Coming up with a Difficulty "Class" or Difficulty "#" takes seconds to decide, and with further thought what degrees of success and/or failure would look like start to paint their way into the picture.

Chronicals of Xoth Recap of Chapter 1 Whisper of Midnight

2026-02-18T15:09:00.001-07:00

The live stream session can be listened to in its utter mundane entirety on the Vanishing Tower Youtube channel.

Here is the nice recap of the game session from one of the players, now on his second PC of the campaign.

Notes for Whisper of Midnight. We are currently in Khadar in the land of Susrah, a decadent city full of conniving Priests and powerful Merchants, like many in Susrah, they follow the god Baal-Khardah mainly, but other dark gods as well. We are with Lion Diamond and his guard/companion, Laker the Axe, trying to sell the almost mythical sword Bloodstone that they took from Ironthorn's body. Back at the ruins of the Tower of Eternity. We take rooms at the Bargain Pleasure Inn, and Lion seeks out Garlord, a well-connected merchant involved with glass blowing who is based in the Red Bull market. After a tense moment or two, Garlord agrees to make inquiries about potential buyers. We have to deduct some money for the rooms, which came out to 45 bronze? We then head to the dishevelled mansion of the Lady Donna Rosa, an old friend of Lions. The place is falling apart, but she greets us warmly, if with the slight disdain of a noble. It seems that Dimond plans to hide the sword here until it is time to sell it, as the sword is already making waves in the city. The sword is hidden in the fireplace in the Garderobe by the main audience chamberLady Donna Rosa has an idiot son. The Blood Stone scimitar is a legendary weapon tied to both Religion and Kingship. It is a powerful symbol of power and legitimacy for both.
Joran is the head of the Glassblowers Guild, so the boss of Garlord We end up drinking at another Inn and Genn ends up fighting a Priest after we mention the Bloodstone scimitar. Genn deals with the priest fairly, but it's time for the party to end and for us to leave before he brings his guards/mercenaries to teach us the error of our ways. As he seems to be one to hold a grudge. Getting back to our quarters, we find out that the deal seems to be on, but it has to be overseen by the Thieves Guild, and they want their cut but promise protection. Genn hides 25 silver behind a rock near the Print and Engraving shop and gets 15 high-quality bullets for his sling. The leader of the Thieves Guild is unknown, but rumour has it that it might be the Viscount himself. The main Guilds are the Glass Blowers, the tanners and the Charcoal burners. The deal is discussed, and we need to bring the sword to the Hall of Midnight where the Thieves will host the auction, but they want to check the sword first to make sure it's not a fake. There are also rumours of an ageless Sorcerer called Peopolis who was the mentor to the fell Sorcerer who currently inhabits the Tower of Eternity. It seems he had the sword once, explaining how Ironthorn got it.
The Thieves guild will receive the payment and then we will receive the diamonds from the thieves guild, but it will be there, but it won't be in front of anyone. No one will know who we are. So as part of the service
So, currently, we are in one of the upper rooms at the Bargain Pleasure discussing how much we should trust the Thieves guild, how to get the sword to them safely and trying to guess the potential buyers and how dangerous they will be to us after the sale.

Savage Sword: Fantastic Pulp-Fantasy Adventures

2026-02-05T08:05:00.000-07:00

Live game session today takes place in James Raggi's Don't Fuck the Priest, a dungeon of corpses!

Expanded Map of Xoth

2026-01-30T21:48:00.003-07:00

My current campaigns in the world of Xoth have involved the far northern reaches and now the eastern edges of the official map of Xoth. Therefore I have combined the Endless White Land and World of Xoth maps with my own rendition of the far eastern nations of Laksha, Azjan, and Ghoma.

This is, as far as I know, the most "complete" map of the mythical world of Xoth you will find! The current active adventure, Acolyte of Death, is taking place north east of the city-state of Khadar. Plunging into the Ash Steppe the PCs have encountered corrupt warlords, violent battle-apes, and a dungeon of corpses!

Acolyte of Death... a session report

2026-01-21T20:30:00.001-07:00

is the name of my current Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery adventure. One of the players has been so kind to write up a session report of the action so far. Here it is as I like having as many records of a session as I possibly can get.

Acolyte of Death

Hardon Kumar, unlike his father, is unlucky in games of chance. Sure, he wins a bit from time to time but nowhere near enough to cover his losses. And his recent losses have been substantial enough that those he owes have decided to get their money another way and arranged to sell his niece into slavery. This obviously didn't go down too well with his long-suffering Uncle. His Uncle in no uncertain terms told Hardon to return to him his daughter or to expect to find a price on his head. So, Hardon ropes his old friend Frisco Shan's, the fabled hunter into his half-baked rescue plan, and together they set out to rescue his put upon niece.

They trace the kidnappers back to a half-ruined town in the ash wastes. Twenty or so crumbling buildings, half buried, only half seemed to be currently occupied. An inn, a ruined temple and what looks like an old fort seem to be the only substantial buildings remaining. The town's name is Fanwier or something similar and after getting a hostile reception from the few townsfolk encountered outside they made their way to the dismal looking Inn known according to its swinging sign as the Twilight Inn. The inn is well named as it's ill-lit, full of smoke and unpleasant odors. Behind the rough looking barman are shelving which holds filthy glass jars in which human heads float. A few drinks were had and a couple of questions were asked. It seems the man we were looking for is indeed Varaak Ironthorn the local taxman who seems to moonlight as a bandit. The dynamic duo are interrupted by a low born Susrahian mercenary who tries to start trouble but luckily is soon dealt with. Unfortunately, he seems to have been working for Ironthorn so hearing angry voices approaching it was time to flee with what little information they had gathered.

They flee and barely manage to avoid the pursuing mercenaries, and they head towards the ruins of the Tower of Eternity, the possible location of Hardons kidnapped niece. It seems that she was sold onto this unpleasant sounding man by the name of Aulric. Hardon was sure that if he could just talk to this fellow, it could all be sorted out, Frisco wasn't too sure about that, but you never know. After hours of travelling across the barren ash filled landscape they make it to a vale with the black stone ruins of a tower, surely this is the place described to them.

Frisco was able to confirm that this was indeed their target as she noticed the tacks of a cart pulled by oxen heading towards a small outbuilding to the side of the ruined tower. Stealthily approaching the buildings, they were surprised to hear nothing apart from the groans and snorts of the oxen in the small building next to the tower. There didn't seem to be a way into the main body of the tower but they did discover a crude tunnel that led underneath its ruined bulk. The tunnel was dark and noisome and there was a strong smell of animals underlined with the smell of their dung. They explored the nearby chambers, not finding much apart from a pile of human offal and in a side chamber a box containing several glass vials. A mix of red and green liquids, what they did is currently a mystery. They then encountered a lot of armed, armored apes who were oddly annoyed. Much bloodshed and heroic combat happened but at last they managed to fight their way back out but at a terrible cost, Handsome Hardon was nearly beaten to death and was currently unconscious, the sound of his ribs grinding against each other as he was dragged back into the moonlight and away from that grim tower.

Even though it may look like I have mangled the spelling of some of the names I am in fact using the way they would be spelt in beautiful Laksha. All praise Simatala God of the bloody white jade altar.

Lying abandoned on the ash plains Hardon experienced a fever dream. He was so close to entering his god's blood-flecked maw but instead of falling into that black abyss he saw a humanoid figure seemingly made of stone walk towards him holding a large copper bowl in his hands. This bowl smoked and produced a hellish smell as amongst its hot coals Hardon could make out burning entrails. He began begging for mercy, saying he was too young to die and that he had things to do. And this is where the new hero enters...Genn a mysterious stranger consumed with thoughts of bloody revenge onto Ironthorn and his men. They had cast envious eyes onto Genn’s farm and in one bloody night had claimed it in fire and blood. Leaving Genn half mad and alone in the wastes seeking his vengeance. It seems that Frisco had disappeared into the surrounding darkness but not before leaving Hardon by a weak fire and it was the light from this as well as the painful murmurs from Hardon that drew him to the pitiful camp. After quickly scanning the area to make sure that it wasn't some elaborate trap, he being a man of honor in these dishonest times he attempted to bring Hardon to consciousness, if only to find out why he was alone out here in the middle of nowhere. He managed to wake Hardon and after several attempts he got the gist of what the hell was going on. He had seen the stone figure briefly as well before it had disappeared somehow but decided to keep that to himself for now. Any further questions had to wait as they were interrupted by the sounds of hooves and the angry shouting of men. It seemed like Ironthorn and his men hadn't given up on their search and had now arrived at the tower demanding answers and Aulric. They were not met with offers of refreshments or hospitality and after sending two men into the tunnels three apes yelled out their challenges.

Hardon and Genn lay hidden nearby in a small fold in the ground and watched in fascinated horror as these two groups began to rip into each other. The battle was hard fought with heads and organs crushed and blood flying out everywhere, turning the dark ash beneath the bellowing combatants into a thick sickly soup. The men managed to down one of the apes but at the cost of most of their lives. Finally, only a few men remained. One looked at the odds and wisely fled, whipping his horse madly in his desperation to get away. Ironthorn though bravely stood his ground, his horse no longer an option after it had been raked by an ape’s vicious claws. It now lay thrashing madly on the ground and no good to Ironthorn. So, he yelled out to his gods and with his sword in hand charged into the two remaining apes. They welcomed his cries with bellows of their own and with a crash the last battle was joined. Genn was tempted to send a stone into Ironthorn via his sling but decided that that wasn't necessary and may reveal their position to the apes and that looked like a bad idea as with horrendous cries they ripped Ironthorn apart. The wastes returned to silence after the shocking noise of battle. The apes began to rip the bodies apart occasionally biting chunks out of choice parts as they went. They then picked up anything that looked valuable including Ironthorns sword. The weak light causing the large ruby on its hilt to gleam red. Clean-up finished they dragged their dead companion back down into the noisome tunnels with only the occasional huff and snort to mark their passing until they were consumed by the shadows. Genn and Hardon looked at each other, shrugged and began to slowly make their way down to what was left of the ten men hoping to find something of value if only that was Ironthorn's skull.

Example of Flexible Use with USR Specilisms

2026-01-08T13:03:00.003-07:00

Specialisms in USR are essentially custom mechanics for the game completely player generated. This differs from a traditional skill system common in most tabletop roleplaying games (ttrpgs). Where a skill list is restrictive a specialism is permissive. A player creating their first (U)nbelievably (S)imple (R)oleplaying PC would be served well deciding how their character would most likely break the game rules to achieve results as any other factor in initial character concept. But this is easier said than done.

What follows is an example of lifting game mechanics from other game systems and turning them into useful, thematic specialisms for your PC (Player Character). Zenobia is a sword and sorcery ttrpg from Zozer Games. It mimics Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery's combat procedure closely with its use of simultaneous action resolution and the difference in attack totals derives the damage done by a successful attack. This means any of the games combat mechanics, buffs, feats, tactics, etc. should easily translate into USR terms. For example:

"Saving Combat Results As a tactical option the winner of a combat round can opt to save some or even all his combat result to increase the level of any injuries inflicted in a subsequent round. This simulates the maneuver called a feint where the advantage is gained but not exploited immediately. Feinting requires the attacker to have uninjured legs since quite a bit of rapid maneuvering is assumed. These saved result points are instantly forfeited when the character loses a round of combat. This makes the tactic a risky one; you dare not save them too long - keep your feint stringing along. Note that combat result points saved in this way only add to the injury type available and are never added to the Combat Attack roll. Non-Adventurers (most lowly NPCs and extras, in other words) are not able to carry over their combat results in this way."

This is straight out of the Zenobia rulebook. As a USR Sword & Sorcery Specialism it might look like this:

Feint +A. Save some or all combat result to increase the level of injurie in a subsequent round.

Notice there is no positive Die Roll Modifier (DRM) listed in the Specialisms' description, just the Attribute it is tied to. In this case, the character's Action Attribute. This indicates this Specialism modifies the basic rules in some way instead of the normal +2 to the Attribute roll itself. In the normal case of most Specialisms the application of a DRM to increase a degree of success makes most sense. The PC has Melee +2 Action then any melee attack will be 2 points of success greater than would normally be expected. But in the above case, the rules from Zenobia are allowing the player to change failure into success in future, later rounds. A sharp departure from how most players would approach Specialism design.

This does require more rules for governance of effects as unintended consequences manifest from these adjustments. But this labor is mostly solved by the games mechanical descriptions already provided. As always, the Crypt Keeper, the game's referee, has final say on the design of any Specialism. I think the effort is necessary to take advantage of all the freedom a rules-lite game system provides players.

For example,

Feint +A. Save some or all combat result to increase the level of injurie in a subsequent round. Feinting requires the attacker to have uninjured legs. Saved result points are instantly lost when the character loses a round of combat.

It is this free roaming poaching Trollish Delver's USR game was designed for. Cobble useful mechanics and skills from other existing roleplaying books (which you no doubt have many) and adding them into the USR tool kit. This is the brilliance of USR, as a base for the rules of your game. It allows you to build new concepts out of your existing game library.

Quick NPC Stats for USR

2026-01-08T11:19:00.003-07:00

Book Three Worlds of Adventure includes a bestiary for Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery. Fully-stat'ed animals and monsters the Crypt Keeper can use to quickly populate their Sword & Sorcery world.

Even though Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying is a simple roleplaying game, crafting and creating NPCs does require much supposition and guesswork on the part of the Crypt Keeper. Rules-lite roleplaying systems, if they have one thing in common, is the expectation the game master will do much of the world building and additional rules creation as fits the genre. This makes relevant supplements written for the obscure, niche games are doubly valuable.

But if you are not sitting down to write a book for other referees to use you can save yourself time with useful shorthand for the statistics and mechanics of the game. Here is the shorthand I devised for Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery;

One Attribute die instead three. Instead of listing all three attributes of Action, Wits, and Ego just assign one die type to cover the spread. For example, listing d8 instead of Action d8, Wits d6, Ego d10 as would normally be written.
Pick Hits, don't roll for them. Whatever you think the NPC should have is what they should have.
List attack and defense as briefly as possible. For example, +2 A means any roll against the Action Attribute receives a +2. Or +2 short sword. This means the wielder applies this bonus only when using this specific weapon.

Therefore, a mad Battle-Ape could look like this:

Gorilla Guard d8/7, +2 A when Berserk, +2 DR.

What is left out is the headings for three attributes and Hits. We use a d8 for everything, and the creature has 7 hits. Any "physical" actions it takes receives a +2 if the beast is in an enraged state and the triggering events would be known by you, the Crypt Keeper. And the +2 damage resistance from both hide and armor is not detailed in full. What is here is enough to run an encounter with these creatures whenever they come up.

The Alchemist's Folly

2026-01-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

Kael pressed his back against the cold stone wall, listening to the guttural hooting echoing through the alchemist's tower. Beside him, Mira checked her throwing knives for the third time, her dark eyes reflecting the sickly green luminescence seeping from under the laboratory door.

"I don't like this," she whispered. "Torven was supposed to meet us an hour ago."

"Torven's probably dead," Kael replied, adjusting the leather bracer that concealed his lockpicks. "Along with everyone else foolish enough to collect Magister Vohn's bounty."

The bounty had seemed straightforward enough: enter the alchemist's abandoned tower, retrieve his research journals, collect five hundred gold crowns. But abandoned was not the word Kael would use now. The tower was very much occupied.

A crash from below made them both freeze. Heavy footfalls on stone, then silence.

"They're hunting," Mira breathed.

Kael had seen one of the creatures from the courtyard before they'd climbed in through the third-floor window. It had been massive, easily eight feet tall, with shoulders like a bull and arms thick as tree trunks. But it was the intelligence in its eyes that had chilled him. This was no mindless beast.

"Vohn was experimenting with transformation elixirs," Kael said, piecing it together. "The city guard said he'd been buying apes from the exotic traders. He must have been trying to create soldiers."

"Well, he succeeded." Mira peered around the corner toward the laboratory door, which hung askew on broken hinges. "Question is, can we get past them?"

Through the doorway, Kael could see overturned tables, shattered glass, and the scattered pages of ruined books. Claw marks gouged the wooden benches. Whatever had happened here, Vohn had lost control of his creations.

A shape moved in the shadows of the laboratory. Massive, deliberate. Then another behind it.

"Two inside," Mira reported. "Both between us and wherever Vohn kept his journals."

Kael studied the room's layout. A balcony overlooked it from the floor above, and a heavy chandelier hung from iron chains over the center. Alchemical apparatus lined the walls, including several large glass vessels still bubbling with colored liquids.

"I have an idea," he said. "But you're not going to like it."

"I already don't like it."

"We need a distraction. Something to get them out of that room."

Mira's hand went to the small pouch at her belt. "I have two smoke bombs left."

"Perfect. Throw one down the main stairwell. When they go to investigate, we slip into the laboratory, grab what we can, and get out through the balcony window."

"And if they don't take the bait?"

"Then we improvise."

Mira gave him a flat look but moved silently toward the stairwell. Kael watched the laboratory entrance, counting heartbeats. One of the apes moved past the doorway, knuckles scraping the floor, its enhanced musculature rippling under patchy fur. It wore the remnants of a leather harness, probably from Vohn's attempts to control it.

The smoke bomb clattered down the stone steps with a pop and a hiss. Thick gray smoke billowed upward.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then came a deafening roar that shook dust from the ceiling. Heavy footsteps thundered toward the stairs—not two sets, but three. A third ape emerged from the laboratory, this one bearing a wicked scar across its face and wielding a broken table leg like a club.

"Go!" Mira hissed.

They sprinted for the laboratory as the apes descended the stairs in pursuit of the phantom intruder. Kael leaped over an overturned chair and began searching the debris. Papers everywhere, most torn or stained with chemicals. Mira rifled through a chest in the corner while keeping watch on the door.

"Here!" Kael found a leather journal wedged under a collapsed bookshelf. The symbol on its cover matched Magister Vohn's seal. He stuffed it into his pack and grabbed two more nearby that looked intact.

A roar, much closer now. The apes had discovered the ruse.

"Time to go!" Mira was already at the balcony door, forcing it open with her dagger. She swore. "It's locked from the outside!"

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Kael looked around desperately. The chandelier. The alchemical vessels. The balcony above.

"Up there!" He pointed to the interior balcony. A rope used for hoisting equipment still hung from its railing. "We climb!"

The first ape appeared in the doorway, scarred face twisted in rage. It spotted them immediately and charged, table leg raised high. Kael grabbed a glass beaker of violet liquid from the nearest table and hurled it. The vessel shattered against the creature's chest, and the liquid began to smoke and hiss. The ape howled, clawing at its burning flesh.

Mira was already climbing, her lithe form scaling a bookshelf to reach the rope. Kael followed, hauling himself up as the second ape entered the room. This one was smarter. It grabbed the bookshelf and shook it violently.

Kael jumped, caught the rope, and scrambled upward as the bookshelf crashed down. The ape leaped after him with terrifying agility, its massive hand closing around his ankle.

Mira's knife flashed. The blade sank into the creature's wrist and it released Kael with a shriek. He pulled himself onto the balcony as Mira helped drag him over the railing.

The third ape appeared below, pointing up at them. All three began climbing—using the furniture, the walls, the very architecture of the tower itself. They moved with horrifying coordination, their enhanced bodies making them far more capable than natural apes.

"The window!" Mira ran for the balcony's exterior window. This one opened easily. Cold night air rushed in.

But escape meant a three-story drop to the courtyard below. Kael looked around frantically. The rope they'd climbed. The chandelier chains. An idea formed.

"Cut the chandelier!" he shouted, drawing his sword and hacking at the thick rope secured to the balcony railing. "When it falls, it'll hit those chemical vessels!"

Mira understood instantly. She sheathed her knife, drew a small hand axe, and began chopping at the chandelier's chain where it anchored to the balcony wall. The metal links parted slowly.

The apes reached the balcony level, pulling themselves up from below. The scarred one, still smoking from the chemical burn, was in the lead.

The last chain link separated. The chandelier plummeted, its iron frame crashing directly into the cluster of bubbling alchemical vessels below. Glass exploded. Liquids mixed. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the laboratory erupted in flame.

The explosion sent all of them sprawling. Kael felt the heat wash over him as he grabbed Mira and pulled her toward the window. Below, the apes' roars turned to screams as fire engulfed the chamber.

"The roof!" Mira pointed upward. A wooden beam extended from the window to the tower's peaked roof. It was narrow, precarious, but it led to the exterior.

They climbed out onto the beam as smoke poured from the window behind them. The night wind whipped at their clothes. Behind them, the entire tower was now burning, flames licking from windows on every floor.

The beam led to the roof's edge, where a decorative spire stood. And beyond that, the stone wall of the adjacent building, perhaps ten feet away.

"Please tell me you're thinking what I'm thinking," Mira said.

"Jump or burn. Easy choice."

They ran along the beam, footsteps sure despite the smoke and heat. At the edge, they leaped together into the darkness, arms windmilling for balance. Kael hit the adjacent roof hard, rolling to absorb the impact. Mira landed beside him with cat-like grace.

They lay there for a moment, breathing hard, watching Vohn's tower burn against the night sky. From within came one final, agonized roar before the roof collapsed inward.

"The journals?" Mira asked.

Kael patted his pack. "Three of them. Singed but readable."

"Five hundred crowns?"

"Split two ways." Kael grinned despite the pain. "Not bad for a night's work."

"Not bad?" Mira laughed, the sound slightly manic. "We were nearly killed by enhanced apes in a burning tower!"

"That's what makes it worth five hundred crowns." Kael pulled himself to his feet, offering her a hand. "Come on. Let's collect from Magister Vohn before he hears about this and decides to renegotiate."

They disappeared into the shadows of the city rooftops, leaving the blazing tower behind them as the watch bells began to ring across the midnight streets.

In his pack, Vohn's journals remained safe. And in their margins, scrawled in the alchemist's desperate hand, were the words that would have warned them all: The formula works too well. They're learning. They're organizing. Gods help us, they're planning.

But that discovery would have to wait for another night.

Optional Ideas for Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery

2025-12-17T20:31:00.002-07:00

Starting to want to write again. This has got me looking at my USR products, especially Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery. I am about to start another campaign in the world of Xoth, and improving the total three-book gaming kit is starting to fester.

Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery is a fantastic, lightweight engine, but its "Unbelievably Simple" nature can sometimes feel a bit too abstract for a gritty pulp fantasy campaign.

To improve the game while keeping its minimalist spirit, I’ve brainstormed the following ideas: Streamlining the Janky Bits, Deepening the Pulp Flavor, and The "Blood & Grime" Combat Patch.

1. Streamlining the "Janky" Mechanics

The Deluxe edition adds layers (like hit locations) that some believe clash with the core system's elegance.

Ditch Hit Locations for "Wound Descriptions": Instead of rolling a d20 for a hit location (which slows down the flow), use a Damage Delta (the difference between rolls) to describe the wound.

1–2 Damage: A shallow cut or bruise.
5+ Damage: A "maiming" hit—the Crypt Keeper (CK) applies a temporary penalty to a relevant attribute based on the narrative.

The "Undefended" Rule Fix: The RAW (Rules as Written) says once you use your actions, you are "undefended" and hit on a 4+. This can lead to "gang-piling" where a hero dies instantly.

Improvement: Allow a "Desperate Defense." If attacked while undefended, the hero can still roll their Action die, but it is halved (rounded down). This keeps the tension without making death a mathematical certainty.

2. Deepening the Pulp Flavor

Sword & Sorcery is about high stakes and temporary riches. These rules reinforce that "Conan-esque" cycle.

"Loot for Life" (Carousing Improvement): In S&S, heroes are often broke by the next adventure.

Rule: To level up or increase Hits, players must spend their gold on carousing. 100 Silver spent = 1 XP. If they don't spend it, they don't grow. This solves the "hoarding" problem and keeps them hungry for the next quest.

Corruption & Dark Sorcery: Magic should feel dangerous.

Rule: Every time a Sorcery test is failed, the caster gains 1 Corruption Point. At 5 points, they gain a physical or mental deformity (milky eye, withered hand, paranoia). This makes magic a "nuclear option" rather than a reliable tool.

3. The "Blood & Grime" Combat Patch

If you want combat to feel more tactical without adding a 300-page manual:

Fighting Styles (Bonus Specialisms)

Instead of generic specialisms, allow players to pick a Stance that modifies their dice:

| Stance | Benefit | Drawback |

| :--- | :--- | :--- |

| Berserk | +2 to Damage Delta on a win. | -2 to your roll if you lose (take more damage). |

| Defensive | Win ties automatically. | You cannot deal damage this round. |

| Precise | Crit on a "Max Die Roll" even if the enemy doesn't roll a 1. | -1 to total roll result. |

The "Shields Shall Be Splintered" Rule

Rule: If a player takes a hit that would kill them or knock them unconscious, they can choose to have their shield shatter. The damage is reduced to 0, but the shield is gone forever. This adds a dramatic "last stand" moment.

4. Summary Table of Action Difficulties

If you find yourself stalling to think of Target Numbers (TN), use this "Pulp Standard" scale:

Difficulty	TN	Example
Pulp Heroic	4+	Climbing a rough wall, intimidating a guard.
Legendary	7+	Deciphering a cursed scroll, jumping a 15ft gap.
God-Slaying	10+	Resisting a Sorcerer Supreme’s mind control.

Converting DCC/OSR stats to Mongoose Traveller (part 2)

2025-11-26T22:10:00.005-07:00

Time to finish up my Dungeon Crawl Classics conversion to Mongoose Traveller Stats. We are in the process of converting a Trillomite Guardian into the Traveller 2D6 system.

The beast has the following DCC stat block: Init +2; Atk tarsal claw +2 melee (1d4) or barbed chains +2 (1d8) or special; AC 14; HD 2d8; hp 14 each; Move 40' or special; Act 1d20; SP cannot be surprised by normal means, wall-crawling, pheromone blast 20' radius once per turn - all living creatures in range must succeed on a DC 18 Will save or become confused and attack a random target in the area; SV Fort +5, Ref +2, Will +4.

All we have left is the "special" abilities the creature has as well as how to use the Saving Throws as Die Roll Modifiers (DRMs) on the 8+ target number scale. Like many special abilities there is an important narrative element involved in the action as well as rolling dice to adjudicate a result. Here we have a creature which can never be surprised except by advanced forms of cloaking, can climb inverted as well as climb vertical surfaces, and has a pheromone blast in a 20' radius. These are details which need no dice roll to rule on. In fact, they inform the Game Master on possible behaviors and "best practices" these guardians may utilize prior to any encounter.

So how does one handle the pheromone blast? The power lists a Difficulty Class (DC) of 18. That is a steep number to achieve on 2D6, no doubt. Here I need to scale the numbers down a bit. Keeping it simple, I just divide the DC in half. 18 becomes a 9. PC needs a 9+ roll to resist the confusion gas. I personally use the Endurance (END) stat on the Traveller character sheet as the roll-against ability. If the PC has a high enough END score to grant a DRM you add it.

The DCC Saves (SV) are self-explanatory, these alien fucks have a +2 Dodge. If they take some kind of concussive system shock the Fortitude +5 DRM gives you the factors you need, and Will +4 is the alien creature's resistance to psionics, mind control, truth serums, etc.

The trick with making conversions at the table fast is to pull out the basic numbers any NPC in any game is likely to have and find the corollary with the game system you are actually using. There are not many scales of values you are really comparing and contrasting. 3D6, D20, D100, 2D6, 2D10, Success #s, Dice Pools. This is all simple math in the hands of an experienced Game Master, or should be.

Converting DCC/OSR stats to Mongoose Traveller

2025-11-25T08:07:00.004-07:00

This simple hack allows me to use Dungeon Crawl Classics modules, Lamentations of the Flame Princess modules, and any D20 system really, at the table in my classic game of science fiction adventure using Mongoose Traveller. The reason I do this is because to a certain degree fantasy and science fiction are two sides of the same coin. There is even a genre convention for when the line between fantasy visual medium and science fiction visual medium, Science Fantasy!

I find site location adventures the most straightforward example of this use. Where a "Tomb of the Ancients" would not be out of place in either adventure setting. So I am going to take some monsters out of DCC #84A Lost Tomb of the Ancients to demonstrate this hack.

A Trillomite Guardian has the following DCC stat block: Init +2; Atk tarsal claw +2 melee (1d4) or barbed chains +2 (1d8) or special; AC 14; HD 2d8; hp 14 each; Move 40' or special; Act 1d20; SP cannot be surprised by normal means, wall-crawling, pheromone blast 20' radius once per turn - all living creatures in range must succeed on a DC 18 Will save or become confused and attack a random target in the area; SV Fort +5, Ref +2, Will +4.

Kind of a bloated stat block for an OSR creature, but this is DCC and they go over the top with some fairly cool features built into monsters and PCs. But this DCC stat block does provide some very useful numbers to use in game for combat resolution or any other action a character in Traveller would attempt to do.

First one is Initiative (Init). Just use this straight, no modification. For our Trillomite Guardian this is +2. Therefore the referee would add 2 to the creatures 2D6 initiative die roll. Same with Attacks (Atk). Just use as listed. A Trillomite's tarsal claw provides +2 melee and does 1d4 points of damage. 1d4 may not sound like a lot of damage, but don't forget the add-on benefits of "effect". The higher a die roll achieves the greater the damage of a successful attack. In Mongoose Traveller 2e. So a decent roll of 9 or 10 gets boosted two plus the d4 die roll giving you 4-8 pts of damage on an attack. If the opponent is not armored this can become a serious wound really quick.

Yes, just use the damage dice as listed. Traveller is a 2D6 game system. But I am not going to go through the brain damage of converting 1d8 into 2d6 terms. Just have the dice on hand and roll a d8. These DCC monsters are being converted into "alien humanoids" so any difference in mechanics can be hand-waved away. The aliens are well and different then humans so there.

Ascending Armor Class I use the value for the creatures innate armor, or at least reflects how hard it is to actually damage the creature. In Traveller armor absorbs damage, not make one harder to hit. Is this balanced? Does it make sense? My gut says "close enough to not give a shit".

Whether actual armored plates or reflecting special abilities, the armor factor does not have to mean physical protection. I can use this value for a game mechanic to adjudicate damage effects not covered in the basic Traveller rule set. Just like in superhero game systems where you have base, generically described powers, and it is up to the PC to color in the "effects" of the power. Describe the very nature of the generic 5d6 energy blast, is it frost, flame, etc. This type of in-game decision making is a hallmark of old school games and their OSR derivatives.

Hit Dice for Hit Points, feel free to roll them. I just take the listed HP right out of the book. So these Trillomite bastards have an armor value of 14 and 14 HP. It will take at least 15 points of damage inflicted on a Trillomite to start hurting it physically. This makes autofire and lots of ammo the PCs' best friend, and that is just the way I like it!

I have to jet to work, so I will finish up the conversion in the next blog post.

The Vanishing Tower

Mass Combat Cards for USR Sword & Sorcery

Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying returns for its 15th Anniversary Edition.

Betting, Racing, and Other Means of Chaos

Say-ithe AI; Star Fury Over the Shattered Nebula

Star-Fury Over the Shattered Nebula

Table of Contents

The Aetherion Spiral — Galaxy Overview

Civilization Technology Level

FTL Travel: Dimensional Fold

The Age of Fractured Stars — Historical Era

The Compact of Unified Worlds

The Sundering War

The Fractured Present

The Shattered Reach — Regional Overview

Sub-Regions of the Shattered Reach

Major Settlements & Locations

Major Factions

Overview

Ideology & Goals

Military Strength

Notable Traits & Role in the Reach

Overview

Ideology & Goals

Military Strength

Notable Traits & Role in the Reach

Overview

Ideology & Goals

Military Strength

Notable Traits & Role in the Reach

Overview

Ideology & Goals

Military Strength

Notable Traits & Role in the Reach

Overview

Ideology & Goals

Military Strength

Notable Traits & Role in the Reach

Overview

Ideology & Goals

Military Strength

Notable Traits & Role in the Reach

Overview

Ideology & Goals

Military Strength

Notable Traits & Role in the Reach

Political Landscape

The Great Cold War

The Web of Other Powers

Key Political Tensions

The Player Characters' Place

The Ten Genre Pillars

Adventure Hooks

Integrated Setting Themes

The Central Tension: Unity vs. Freedom

The Role of the Past: Promise and Warning

What It Means to Be a Hero

The Shattered Reach as Metaphor

Quick Reference

Setting at a Glance

Major Factions — Summary

Key Locations in the Shattered Reach

The Ten Genre Pillars — Listed

Dor Stryker, Official Mascot of Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery

GUNSLINGERS! Formally known as Western USR

Savage Tales of Xoth, The Headsman's Debt

AI at the Vanishing Tower

New Company Logo

Different System, Different Genres, Same Game?

The Faceless Howl Kabuki Kaiser 2

World of Xoth Campaign Update

Review of The Faceless Howl part one

Chronicals of Xoth, Handful of Stars Session Report

The 3D6 Seven, Nine, Eleven, Thirteen, Fifteen Spread

Chronicals of Xoth Recap of Chapter 1 Whisper of Midnight

Savage Sword: Fantastic Pulp-Fantasy Adventures

Expanded Map of Xoth

Acolyte of Death... a session report

Example of Flexible Use with USR Specilisms

Quick NPC Stats for USR