I was going to write an adventure game, based on some ideas from Tony Bath, that combined some features of a boardgame and a wargame.

There wasn’t much traction or interest in this, as a concept, so I started messing around with different ideas.

Now I think I am going to use the title for the Solo Turn  Sequence I developed for my solo play youtube series on 4 Against Darkness and Kal-Arath.

Be sure to check out the FRP Substack Memorium, for more info on this project and its development.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any questions or suggestions in the comments.

This book got a lot of hype a while back on Twitter, so I ordered it.

Luckily I was able to get an inexpensive copy on a used bookstore site.

Luckily, that is, because it’s not good.

The first story (yes, it’s an anthology of shorts), Black God’s Kiss, is overlong and overwrought, like the Vampire books by Anne Rice. It would have benefited from being more concise. And less dumb. Which is too bad, because it had some interesting elements: an underground realm of evil that can’t be seen by anyone wearing a crucifix, misshapen mutants, a cool temple of evil.

The second story, Jirel Mopes & Cries like a Lovesick Teenage Girl, er Black God’s Shadow, is unreadable.

The first four pages are all Jirel crying and rending her garments about killing Guillaume, the man who invaded her country, defeated her armies, and captured her castle, then threw Jirel into the dungeon. Because now she loves him.

Good grief. This belongs in the Kindle store.

I was going to throw it in the trash, so some other poor, unsuspecting soul doesn’t get exposed to this slop, but I’ll put it on the shelf on the off chance someone has a compelling argument for me to try to read one of the other stories.

0/10 do not recommend

DM Introduction:

This campaign takes place in the Duchy of Aerik, where the fabled Barrowmaze resides. Every spring, around this time, the snow begins to melt, and the Barrow Moor becomes passable, which holds the valley of ancient, interconnected tombs known by locals as the Barrowmaze, near the Village of Helix.

This is when the Duchy gets an influx of adventurers who try to find the fabled Tablet of Chaos that is said to be held within the deepest depths of the ancient Necropolis.

The Duchy of Aerik was founded 100 years ago when the Empire of Man was very new and before the First Emperor declared a universal century of peace on his deathbed. It was founded by the hero Aerik the Mighty and was the first incursion of Imperials into the Reachman’s native home. It is a Neutral Good Empire where imperials hold titles of nobility and the Reachmen commoners toil as serfs. It is also the heart of the Futuras faith which is a combination of the Imperials Crimson faith and the Reachmen’s Old Lore. The Duchy is mostly wild land, and its people are used to the harsh winters and hot summers.

The Village of Helix itself is a growing farming community that is the last bastion on the edge of the territory before you start to head into the Principality of Brines trading nexus. So, despite its small size, it has quite a bit of trade with the Salt Merchants of the Principality in the North and does see some trickling down of goods from the Prelacy of Middenmark to the East.

 The Barrowmaze is a mere 10 miles from the Village of Helix, due to the terrain however, it takes a half of day round-trip to head there. Your group has recently formed and agreed to go on a delve in the tombs to try and strike it rich. Though due to unforseen circumstances you had a late start today!

The group’s guide is Hendon Miller, retired Ranger of Helix. The group consists of two young, aspiring warriors, Flint and Stan, and Spindrift, a shaman from the mountains of Gundgathol, who is accompanied by his spear-brother Fox, and his hound Dogaghr.

This is the tale as told by Spin on returning to Helix, the day after the delve.

March 6

We arrived at the valley of the Barrows in the early evening, with darkness already fallen. Hendon Miller built a small fire to brew a pot of tea while we descended into the Barrow. Young Flint was bursting with energy and enthusiasm for this adventure. Fox and I had walked a long way to get here, seeking out magicks and secrets for our clan. Our enthusiasm was somewhat less, though our anticipation was high.

We found the barrow entrance wide open, as the slab had been removed, perhaps years before. We lit torches and descended into the gloomy pit. A long stair led down to a large room supported by pillars. There were no doors or other connected chambers, just a well in the floor, covered by a rickety tripod-mounted block-and-tackle.

Flint, who had been a cabinet-maker’s apprentice, determined the tripod was unsafe to use for lowering any substantial loads, so we peered under the swinging platform to find a haphazard stair leading down into darkness. Flint lit a second torch, and we descended. About 30 feet down, we came into a second chamber, partially collapsed.

There were frescoes on the walls showing burials being made, in this very barrow. Someone had scrawled, “Get out!” with charcoal over one of the frescoes. This amused me, and I pulled a chunk of chalk from my pouch and added a message of my own, “Believe in Valdaghr”. Fox and Stan got a kick out of this.

The floor was covered with bones, many bones, both animal and human. There were boot tracks going east, out through a passage. We followed the tracks, and I kept a tight leash on Dogaghr, watching for him to alert.

We came to another small room, scattered with debris, and searched for secret doors or hidden treasures to no avail. There was a door, swollen shut in the damp, which was a possible exit. I told Stan and Fox to have their axes ready, as I heard something shuffling on the other side of the door. I was getting ready to pull the door open when I heard a mighty crash!

A great stone slab crashed down in the doorway behind us!

Flint was concerned, but I showed him the crowbars and told him we’d be out in no time. We’re from the mountains, but we aren’t idiots! I asked Flint to open the door right away. He pulled on the door, and it flew open. It seems a trio of animated skeleton guardians were coming through from the other side. Fox threw his axe and decapitated one of the skeletons, and Stan missed, but he and Flint closed with them and were able to smash them to pieces.

The open door led to an empty room. So we took a few minutes to pry up the slab with our crowbars, and Fox drove an iron spike into the jamb to prevent the slab from falling again. We followed the hallway the other direction, and opened the door at the end, only to be ambushed by giant rats!

Two of them bit me, but the rest of the men were able to kill them without getting bitten. I cast a healing spell on myself, praying to Valdaghr against the infection many of these filthy creatures carry.

On the floor of the room were three dead people. Well, a dead dwarf and two dead elfs, anyway. I didn’t recognize the dwarf as being from any of the Gundgathol clans, but he was savagely disfigured.

They must have fallen prey to the rats, as they were badly gnawed and nearly devoured. We recovered an ancient bronze longsword, a crossbow with a quiver of bolts, a book and a sack of coins. Platinum! Over one hundred bright, shiny coins. Praise Valdaghr!

We decided this was the time to wrap up this initial foray, as the Miller was waiting for us above, and was unlikely to wait much longer. We were able to return to the vertical shaft, climb the makeshift stairway, and exit the barrow in time to catch Miller packing up his camp.

We arrived back at Helix near midnight and returned to the barracks. We had arranged for lodging, prior to the expedition.

Before going in, though, I took the group into an alley, away from prying eyes. Here I cast a spell of magical detection, determining none of the items we recovered from the barrow were enchanted. As a valued man-at-arms, we decided to gift Fox with the crossbow and bronze blade.

We split the treasure three ways. I gifted Fox with 1/10 of my share. The book, however, I am keeping for myself. It is definitely the most valuable item to me. It’s an amazing treasure, containing magic spells! Two of the spells were new to me, and I was able to decipher their meaning: Shield and Feather Fall. Praise Valdaghr!

Once ensconced in the barracks, I cast another spell of healing on myself, completing my prayer to Valdaghr for protection from infection.

Downtime Orders

In exchange for guiding us to the Valley of the Barrows, Miller bade us work for him, two days each in the mill. Young Flint was so excited about participating in this adventure, and the vast fortune he’d acquired in just one evening, he volunteered to work the days for both Stan and me.

Stan and I have decided to plumb the barrow once again in a few days.

I will see about recruiting some additional men-at-arms to accompany us, as well as some helpful equipment, as recommended by Flint. 

Recruiting

• I wish to recruit six to ten Heavy Infantry plus a sergeant to lead them, armed and armored to face the types of threats we’ve already seen, maces and spears.
• A wagon with a driver to carry a new tripod to the barrow.

Equipment

I wish to purchase:

• Two potions of Healing, if there are any available in the kirks of the local men.
• One flask of Holy Water.
• A spiked leather collar for Dogaghr.
• A bag of caltrops.
• We need a sturdy new tripod, with a block & tackle, and a 4’ diameter platform to raise and lower heavy items.
• Fox will use his funds to purchase some scale armor.

Downtime, 8-9 March

(Stan and I ran a “solo” venture to Ironguard Motte to recruit men at arms.)

Spindrift and Stan take Sgt Hrothgar and Man at Arms Sigvald to the city of Ironguard Motte to recruit more men.

It’s a one-day journey, each way, and the outbound trip is uneventful.

The evening was busy, visiting taverns and mercenary barracks looking for available mercs. In-between two taverns, in a dark alley, we interrupted a pack of giant rats scrounging the trash.

Fox was carrying a torch and started jumping up and down, shouting [we rolled a 76 on the Reaction table, for a ‘Friendly’ result] and managed to chase them off.

Our trip was a success, in that we were able to find five men available to join our next expedition.

Rurik

Thrainn

Wulfric

Baldric

Ingvar

In the morning, just as we were leaving Ironguard, we encountered a small group of Pilgrims. Led by an elderly cleric, who apparently is on a quest for redemption, we chatted about health and medicine, after Spin mentioned he had been searching for Potions of Healing.

The old cleric [rolled a 98 for Reaction] took a liking to us and gifted us with a potion!

He told us he would write a letter of reference to the home temple, in order to gain some more fellows for our expedition. We thanked him profusely but declined the offer as we are not yet quite ‘flush’ enough to be able to afford Henchmen at this time.

Our return journey was mostly uneventful, until we reached the outskirts of Garden Grove, home of a mighty Druid. Crossing the road in front of us was a large contingent of Orcs, with wagons and slaves!

Numbering over 200, the Orcs are a threat we cannot possibly handle by ourselves. We attempted to flee and evade an outriding patrol, but were unsuccessful…

(At this point we had pinged DM Raptor to assist in adjudicating the Orc encounter. Since it is a big one, AND in the immediate realm of the Druid Lord, we are going to take up the rest of the adventure in the next session.)

In Aceron #2 (7 April 1970) Rod Walker’s name pops up again. But what is most interesting is that there are obviously gaming clubs, associated fanzines, membership dues or subscription fees, and voting mechanisms all taking shape simultaneously. The know-how required to replicate these foundational elements is being distributed all across the United States through interlocking mailing lists at this point with certain figures like Rod Walker, Gygax, Lakofka, and others as the connecting glue.

It’s a remarkable article and I highly recommend you click over and subscribe!

The Carrier Wave for Dungeons & Dragons

At the end of January I went to Captain Con in Warwick, RI, to run a game of Chainmail. The scenario was the Battle of Hastings, 1066. I used minis from Risk: Europe, mounted on 25mm square wooden chips (the cavalry were on 25mm x 50mm).

We used written orders for simultaneous moves, which was a new method for all four players. The players, all veteran wargamers, had never played Chainmail, nor were they familiar with the history of the 1066 Campaign. It was fun to share some knowledge and to see how they interpreted the scenario. I’m looking forward to running this again at Mayhem Con in April.

I realize this breaks my personal rule of not using unpainted minis, but these are for demo games in a multitude of systems (The Killing Fields, Chainmail, Charles Sweet, Siege of Bodenburg, etc) and I just don’t have the time to paint these 400 minis. I will be doing my best to get the minis painted for the Battle of Black Moor Castle for Mayhem.

Also watch for more Chainmail, including a wiki website with annotations and more scenarios based on old magazine articles!

Terrain Board

Last year I picked up a framed board at Hobby Lobby, designed for painting on & hanging on the wall. I coated it with textured paint from Vallejo and a little bit of flocking. I’ll be using it in future videos of games for Ravenfeast, Weird West, and One-Hour Skirmish. I also finally painted and flocked the bases of a bunch of 15mm Napoleonic singles.

Daily Dungeon

The D26 Daily Dungeon project continues, with filming a YouTube short for every day (so far!). You can see the videos on the DAILY DUNGEON PLAYLIST.

It’s all just sketches so far, I’m going to turn in into an “art project” as more of it gets done and we figure out the themes and so forth.

To that end, I picked up a couple of reference books with info on Dungeons, Ruins and traps.

I plan to do a full flip-thru video for both of these in the future.

The February Dungeon Generator is the Print & Paste Cards and Tokens from Crooked Staff publishing on DriveThruRPG.

Dragonslayers of Argosa

I’m going to be starting a new “Dungeons & Dragons is a Wargame” project soon, with a full set of play and process videos. I posted an introductory video you can see here, The Dragonslayer of Argosa Project.

It is partially inspired by Daniel  of Bandit’s Keep & his Song of the Mapper OD&D Actual Play series. Daniel uses OD&D, a modified Chainmail, Outdoor Survival and some oracle tools from Tales of Argosa to generate his adventures.

I will be using the SPI Dragonslayer boardgame as the Campaign Framework for this experiment. The RPG portion will be Tales of Argosa, and any massed combat will be resolved with the WIP Leader of Men Abstract Battle System. Full details will be published at Memorium, the free RPG substack.

Art & Drawing

Also, I am getting back into drawing, a pastime I have neglected for far too long. In the coming year I plan to begin self-publishing more of my own material, including the artwork.

The development of AI slop for both art and content is going to flood the wargame and RPG markets with crap. I’ve been studying the trends, looking at marketing methods, and I believe that creators like Castle Grief, Silver Nightingale, and others are onto something with hand-crafted products. Oh! BTW I have been invited to contribute a dungeon to the latest Visions of Kal-Arath magazine! I am very excited about this and will be putting some serious effort into providing the very best product I can create.

Finally, I am working on a series of products, both in PDF and physical form, that will be available through the itch store and via snail mail zine subscription. The Druid of Mantis Grove is the first example of this, and as soon as I finish the color art I’ll be releasing a physical zine.

Thanks for reading! I look forward to chatting with you all about these projects, leave a comment below!

Your paid subscription to the substack or purchases of itchio products helps support the collection of out-of-print and vintage wargames and rulebooks for study and research. I’ve recently been able to get some really great deals. Watch for more book & game reviews coming up in the next few months!

You can download the PDF Booklet at itch – The Druid of Mantis Grove

EDIT: This project stalled due to the original Sword & Sceptre project being too incomplete. This series will be edited and re-published, featuring more thoughtful worldbuilding.

This year is going to be a big one in terms of publishing my own content that has been building up. I’ve been running “experimental” TTRPG campaigns using Low Fantasy Gaming, Blueholme (plus ACKS) and now Tales of Argosa for just over five years now. I have learned a lot, and it is past time for me to share what I’ve learned.

The first, and most important, aspect of this project is the Druid Quest Adventure Game, ^[1]which has been in development for approximately three years. The 30 Days of Worldbuilding posts will be directly aimed at filling out the World of Weirth^TM as a setting. To that end there is a private wiki being developed, and a multi-player, multi-front map-based wargame campaign being run as play-by-post in the Wargame Culture Design Journal discord^[2]. Session reports and information for both of these games will be published on the World of Weirth^TM website.

I am working on a monthly newsletter called Domesday ’26^[3], which will be published in the OG Zine tradition, printed and mailed to participants. I’m still researching the best way to make this happen. The newsletter will be available as a stack or blog post. (This part is still very much WIP!)

The World of Weirth

The multi-scale game will be happening on this map. Each hex is 25 miles, center-to-center. There are nine Barons ruling domains of seven hexes in area, who all owe fealty to the Emperor.

Each Baron player will be developing their own domain, with regard to details of culture, resources and aesthetic. The game will be run at an operational  level, with four “Seasons” of activity. The longest, Campaign Season, will  be run at 1:1 pacing^[4] for moving troops, taking action against other players, seeking out resources, etc. The broad strokes of the campaign setting have been laid out by previous play, but the details of this map will be defined by the players and the referee.

30 Days of Worldbuilding

“An Author’s Step-by-Step Guide to Building Fictional Worlds”

This workbook by Angeline Trevina is an excellent resource for generating the details of a campaign world. It is loaded with 30 prompts for defining various features, such as Genre, Natural Resources, Food, Trade Routes and Travel, Class divides, Festivals and more. I learned about it from Angeline’s substack, Step-by-Step Worldbuilding. I started working on some of the notes during our Christmas-week trip to visit my family in the Midwest. Unfortunately I did not get as much time to myself for writing as I was hoping for. Rough drafts have been written for about one third of the prompts, and I will be getting the rest down on paper over the next few days.

Thumbnail versions of responses to the prompts will be published first on the Design Journal for subscribers, the full-scale versions will be published here, under the World of Weirth^TM category, over the next 90 days or so. In Q2 the posts will be collected into a zine-style gazeteer of the Empire of Zutakari.

Day 1 – Genre and Setting

The genre of the World of Weirth^TM is best described as “Pulp-informed Sword & Planet”. A familiarity with the works of Robert E Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, HP Lovecraft will be very useful in understanding the aesthetic of the setting I’m creating. It will also draw from comics, television and the silver screen – Monstress, The Sacrificers, Thundarr the Barbarian, Buck Rogers, and even some ideas from The Land of the Lost may make an appearance!

Using the OD&D rules, plus clarifications from Delving Deeper, we aim to create a setting featuring swashbuckling adventures on an exotic world. Medieval-style societies exist as islands of civilization surrounded by a howling wilderness. These baronies consist of agrarian settlements blending feudalism with ancient, poorly understood super-science and unpredictable sorcerous powers. The Barons ruling the various domains are Fighting Men, Clerics and Magic Users at the zenith of their powers.

Some details that inform the setting:

• Settlements are defended by walls of stone or log palisades, or sometimes built on great stone promontories. They are guarded by a garrison of armed men, and the engines of war.
• Settlements have catapults with stockpiles of ammunition in the form of large stones, barrels of pitch, and baskets of fist-sized stones to protect from aerial attack.
• The walls and gates of every settlement is planted all round with wolfbane and garlic. Undead and were-creatures are a deadly threat!
• The gates of Lawful settlements, as well as government offices & the homes of the wealthy, are equipped with basins of Holy Water. Everyone entering must dip their hand into the basin.
• Magic is dangerous and often misunderstood. Unsanctioned or unsupervised magic use may be illegal in some domains.
• It is a cultural  taboo to refuse hospitality to lone travelers, food and a warm place to sleep. It is always acceptable to subject said strangers to the garlic, wolfbane and Holy Water tests.
• It is customary to leave a small offering at a roadside shrine, no matter which deity it may be dedicated to. It is equally likely that any given shrine is dedicated to one of the Elder Deities of Weirth as to one of the Petty Gods.
• Gunpowder and Radium weapons^[5] are strictly regulated by the nobility, the Barons and the Emperor.

Rules-wise, we will be using a limited set of resources:

• The three original booklets of OD&D to establish the implied setting (as described here by Wayne Rossi – The Implied Setting of OD&D).
• The Delving Deeper Reference Rules Compendium for clarifications.
• The Tome of Magic, compiled and curated by yours truly, the Purple Druid, with the spells from Delving Deeper and Battle Magic as described in Chainmail.
• The Sword & Sceptre booklet, also written & compiled by Purple Druid, which has rules for generating Barons, Domains, and large-scale hex crawling at Domain Scale.
• The Leader of Men booklet, written & compiled by Purple Druid, rules for abstracted combat, movement, supplies and communications over the campaign map.

Day 2 will feature Interesting Locations and Points of Interest. Click the tag [ 30 Days of Worldbuilding ] for all of the posts in this series.

References

1. Druid Quest is the working title of a rules supplement for running RPG campaigns at multiple scales simultaneously.
   
2. The Design Journal discord is available to free and paid subscribers of the Wargame Culture substack – wargameculture.substack.com.
   
3. “Domesday ’26” is the newsletter of the Sword & Sceptre Society, a playtest group exploring a methodology for Domain- and Faction-play in a multi-scale RPG. Paid subscribers to the Wargame Culture Design Journal will be the first to get details on this newsletter.
   
4. 1:1 pacing is a traditional, “old school” method of timekeeping in a wargame where in-game time is matched to the real-world calendar. Thus, one week of time in game equals one week of IRL calendar time. If an army leaves City A on August 2 and it will take them three weeks to march to the neighboring domain, they will arrive on August 23 in-game AND after three actual weeks have passed IRL.
   
5. Gunpowder weapons are quite primitive, even by Pulp standards. “Handguns” such as the arquebus exist (see Chainmail). Radium weapons are classed as pistol-like handguns and long-barreled versions similar to muskets. The manufacture of Radium Guns and their ammunition is a secret kept by the Emperor. Unsanctioned possession of either type of firearm is punishable by death.
   

While Hook has run a few “Midnight Chainmail” exercises, this was my first time refereeing a live game via discord.

Hook provided a list of comments, which I’ll address one by one, as well as some of my own thoughts on how the game flowed, and what could have been better.

Read teh whole thing – (Video too!!) Design Journal – Killing Fields Playtest

The Killing Fields will be going into final editing and layout in December. Download your copy of the playtest rules now, for a chance to play the game and make comments.
Get ready for the final print version coming in 2026!

The next part of Druid Quest is this abstracted combat system built on the principles of Tony Bath and Bill Lamming’s Campaign Rules. We will be using this in the forthcoming play-by-post Domain Game playtest of the Druid Quest Adventure Battle Game on the Design Journal Discord.

Read the whole post on Design Journal – Abstract Combat Rules

In July 1970, in Domesday #5 Gary Gygax published Jeff Perren’s Medieval Miniatures Rules, which had been adopted as the official LGTSA Medieval Miniatures Rules.

The astute reader will recognize this as the progenitor of Chainmail, “rules for medieval miniatures”, first published by Guidon Games in 1971.

According to various histories (see wikipedia), Dave and Gary had met at GenCon II in Lake Geneva in August of 1969. Some sources say Gary shared the Chainmail rules with Dave at GenCon, but of course they were still just the LGTSA rules.

We know this because Gary “borrowed” the idea of fantastic creatures and monsters from a short article in The Courier, the newsletter of the New England Wargamers Association, Vol II, issue 7, which was not published until November of 1970.

Read the whole article on the Design Journal – A World Called Entropy