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.

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.

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.