dungeon doll

I hope everyone's holidays have been good! I've been sitting cozy by fires and playing lots of Demon's Souls. It feels a little bit weird writing a year-end blog post seeing as my blog didn't even exist for all of 2024, but I had some thoughts I wanted to organize.

If you missed it, you can find session 1 here . My group returned to Hagfish Hall this week, for our first full-session delve. I also tried out some downtime mechanics, and made my first checks for dungeon restock. The systems for both of these were adapted for od&d from the Serpent Song Hymnal , by I Cast Light! .

Over the last little bit, I've been really wanting to try out the Shock system from Worlds Without Number in od&d. I think it would pair well with weapon-as-initiative , and add some punch to larger weapons.

I got to run od&d for a small group of friends this week, in a dungeon of my own devising. We made characters, talked a bit about game expectations, and did a little group world-building exercise, so the delve itself was on the shorter side, but I think everyone seemed to enjoy it, and I'm happy with how it went.

A little project I've been working on between exams and such. od&d character rules for playing Bloodborne-style hunters. Use with your favorite set of resolution tools.

There's a whole centimeter of snow on the ground, so it's time for me to post some winter themed monsters. My last set of monsters were for the dungeon, so these ones are for the wilderness. Oh and a heads up, some mention of dead children below. Without further ado: Elves of Winter 1 HD, AC as leather. Fae spirits which possess the bodies of children lost gathering firewood. Gangly, with pale flesh and vacant eyes. Walk atop the snow effortlessly, without sinking in. Sharpen icicles to a razor's edge to throw, or fashion into crude spears. Will-o'-the-winter 4 HD, AC as chain. Incorporeal, and immune to non-magical missiles. Appears as distant warmth--the light of a hearth, smoke from a chimney, a campfire just out of reach. Seeks to lure weary travelers to a frigid death. Only once death is certain will you see their true forms: wretched, princely spirits. Skin like ice, eyes aflame. Sack Man 5 HD, AC as chain, Damage 1d6+2. Carries a heavy burlap sack. Stands 10...

2024/11/28: In a cool coincidence, The Nothic's Eye also posted some dungeon gods today! I totally recommend you check them out here ! *** Seasoned adventurers know to respect the dungeon gods, those who's house is the Underworld. Regardless of what one believes on the surface, it is good to stay in their graces.

Johtull Wurm by Ian Miller HD 15, AC as Chain, damage 2d6 (bite). 100' in length, and 12' or more in diameter. Flesh is smooth and rubbery, with a deep indigo hue, marking them as the lords of all worms. The worm's most defining feature is it's grinning maw of human-like teeth on an otherwise featureless face. It will eat anything in it's path, leaving behind a trail of acid-sludge. Always attacks living creatures on sight. Never checks morale.  Swallow whole. Whenever the purple worm attacks a creature human-size or smaller, the target must save versus dragon breath or be swallowed whole. Inside the worm. Creatures caught in the worm's stomach suffer 2d6 damage per round, and -4 to all attack rolls. Squishy insides. All damage dealt to the worm from the inside is doubled. Pearly whites. A purple worm has 32 teeth of smooth, white ivory, which are prized among collectors and make excellent grindstones. A single tooth will sell for 1,000 silver pieces.   **...

I've been trying to keep my posts pretty structured, tho this one may ramble a little. After an exchange with Miranda of In Places Deep over on Bluesky, I started thinking about weapon-as-initiative, and it quickly reached the point where I realized I wasn't going to get anything else done until I wrote a little blog post about it.

2024/11/19: Added a ruling on HP and character death. I read it in a blog post a long time ago, but can't for the life of me remember what the post was. If anyone knows, plz lemme know! 2024/12/05: Found it! It’s this post from Paper & Pencils! I've been flirting with the idea of starting an FMC campaign with some friends, and I wanted to compile some house rules into one place to make that a little easier, in case that does end up happening. As follows:

I love Souls games. I love getting invaded. I wanted to bring some of that energy to my ttrpg games. Some of these are based on invaders from the Dark Souls games, others are my own ideas. For best results, use with the Underclock . Add a Black Phantom entry to your dungeon encounter table. When you roll it, roll on the subtable below.

Primary inspired by this article on thief knacks from Rise Up Comus. I'm also a huge fan of this little spellbook by Substitute Adventurer on Itch.io. I've always liked witches. Lately I've been rocking with Berserk's take on them specifically. I love the way they seem to understand what's actually going on with the world, at least more then others do. This witch is a little more chaotic though. The powers that be are fickle. This is maybe a little high complexity for od&d, but I've still chosen to go with it, since od&d is usually my preferred system. 

I really enjoy campaigns with a small selection of monsters. Luke Gearing wrote about this here . Mark Rosewater of Magic: the Gathering often says "Restrictions breed creativity." At least he used to. I haven't followed Magic in a while. That's the whole intro, I think. It's October, so I wanted to make a small list of spooky monsters, for dungeons which are creepy and/or wet. These are less new monsters and more re-imaginings of pre-existing ones. Here they are: Deathless Legion 1 Hit Die, AC as Chain. Desiccated corpses with pale grey flesh, clad in ancient armour. Very tactical and coordinated, communicating to one-another through battle-sign. Make no noise, but their armour clinks and sheds rust particles, which can give them away. Armour is either bronze rusted blue-green, or iron rusted deep orange, depending on the era of the corpse. Each legionnaire has a gold coin under it's dried, black tongue. Malice Hounds 1 Hit Die, AC as Leather. Twisted, lanky...

In the interest of procrastinating my upcoming assignments, I wanted to elaborate on something I posited on another website: replacing Intelligence and Wisdom with Arcane and Faith.

Morale system I've been using lately:

Hi, I'm alice! I've been playing ttrpgs for close to half my life now, and sometimes I have thoughts about them, so I made a blog. I don't except to post super regularly, I just wanted a place to put my thoughts. I love lots of different types of games, though I expect I'll mostly end up posting about od&d.