Monday, July 14, 2025

Help Me Buck the AI Monkey

 

When I created Swords Against Madness, I wasn't expecting a big hit. I figured that my own LSD-soaked imitation on Tale of the Manticore with immortal space barbarians and killer robots might garner an audience of 20... including my friends and family.

I sure as hell didn't expect it to have over 500 regular listeners and thousands of downloads. I am astounded, amazed, blessed, and humbled by the response  to my show.

Now I want to make it into an eve higher-quality, weirder, wilder, trippier project than before.And the first step to that is to ditch one of its weakest points: the AI-generated music.

Saturday, July 5, 2025

500 Posts!

 I've been writing this blog for five years now, and I am proud to say I have finally hit my 500th post!

I haven't had the time I would like for it lately, but for all the right reasons:

Welcome to the Deathtrap has inspired me to write a number roleplaying games from full OSR clones, to OSR-compatible games with their own Dark Fantasy setting and mechanics, to my own unique 2d6 Weird West system, to a one-page horror game.

I also have published a number of short OSR modules, and I am working towards a full-sized campaign setting. 

W2tDT has attracted some friends who share my passion for D&D, it's history, and it's potential, allowing me to participate in many campaigns both short and long.

I have created 2 ttrpg short podcasts for friends and ongoing solo actual play podcast with over 500 regular listeners. Not to mention a complete 41-episode science fantasy audio drama inspired in part by the Gonzo gaming aesthetic I have come to love since starting the blog.

I have all of you to thank for carrying me through the lockdown, through the transitions involved with becoming a work-at-home dad, and through a life-altering central nervous system injury and learning to live with a disability.

I want to thank you all and hope that this blog will still be seeing the off update in another five years.

Friday, July 4, 2025

Making the Low Levels Awesome

 I've been running a Swords & Wizardry game at home the last few weeks that has been possibly one of the most fun, most campaigns games I have played to date.

My idea started out both simple and challenging: "What if I ran a D&D game with as much surreal, plane-travelling weirdness as there was in late-90s Magic: the Gathering. I'm talking the peak insanity of the era of Tempest, Ice Age, Urza's Destiny, and Urza's Legacy, where the game was simulating a war between insane cthulhoid cyborgs and a race of precision-bred magicians with living shards of crystal and an inter-dimensional goblin horde in the middle.

I wanted low-level PCs to be roaming the planes, dealing with truly out-there wizards, and warped magical entities. As always, I subscribe to the theory that level one should feel as awesome as level 10.

My Setup


 Swords & Wizardry played RAW, but using a cosmology based on the AD&D2e / D&D3.X era Great Wheel / Planescape planar layout.

The PCs come from a kingdom on a mostly-undetailed world I am basing mostly on a mix of H.P. Lovecraft's Dream-Cycle mixed with a bit of Lord Dunsany, then brought kinda' down-to-earth with the trippier bits of The Elder Scrolls' Tamriel.

 At the beginning of the campaign the PCs are new arrivals at Armathan, a grand castle on a high-mountian meadow. The Mountain's great workshops are powered by a waterfall and streams that run right through its undercroft. The Castle itself was built as a part of and to defend a silver mine and an important monastery. The mine in turn connected to ancient pre-human ruins.