Making a Zine Accessible to the Incarcerated

Okay, fair warning, I am going to go a bit out of character here and speak my mind on a topic that isn't gaming. I keep my blog apolitical because getting involved in discussions of the Political with strangers on the Internet is exhausting, fruitless, and these days attracts bullshit gestapo behaviour from illiberal assholes on both sides of the spectrum. 

Shortly after I made Drakken in 2022 I was approached by an organization in California that was dedicated to promote literacy in prisons. Apparently, Dungeons & Dragons was their most requested reading material from inmates at the time. D&D being expensive as it was at the time was simply not possible, but the potential benefits of TTRPGs for inmates was too good to pass up. They were hoping that I would be willing to let them, for a modest fee, distribute Drakken, remixed a bit to meet their requirements.

I told them they could have it for free.

The Journal of Agatha Fizzyflask -- My Cozy Campaign Experiment (pt.2)

Created using HiDream I1 fast

In my last post I described how I created a tool that let me create a series of magical maladies, their cures, and adventure locations where the important ingredients to those cures would be found.

(I decided to skip the poisons in the end, because the material I already had was more than enough for what I needed.)

The next step was to put it all together! I envisioned a campaign where a few strangers to the Dommar valley would be stopping as their caravan waits for a rock-slide to be cleared from one of the passes through the mountains, and find themselves suddenly called to action to help on the basis that they are bored strangers, intelligent, and literate. The local witch, a she-gnome named Agatha is missing, and one of the villagers has come down with a perilous case of Frostbite Fever. They can't wait for Agatha any longer, so they beg the PCs to read Agatha's book and help them make the cure.

And this would be the core basis for the campaign. The PCs encounter some peril in the village that one of Agatha's cures or potions could resolve, and so the PCs find themselves replacing Agatha as the village herbalist, alchemist, and witch... at least until they can learn of her fate.

The Journal of Agatha Fizzyflask -- My Cozy Campaign Experiment (pt.1)

Stardew Valley is © Concerned Ape Games

My wife has been playing Stardew Valley a lot this summer; a game where you play a young person who has just inherited a farm in a fantastical world that sits at something like 1980s technology. It's what the video game industry, and more recently the TTRPG industry refer to as a "Cozy Game." Meaning it is focused on a small area, the stakes for success are failure are small: you might save a community, but the world is in no danger, and the relationships you build with the characters in the community is very much the focus.

Cozy games are not my cup of tea at all, but the game has sort of cast a spell over the rest of my family. My boys are excited to hear what has gone on in the farm and see the strange new fantasy farm animals and the useful item that my wife's avatar brings up from the dungeon. 

Well, if you want to run a good scenario the key is to figure out what your audience likes, and I got the feeling that something like Stardew Valley might make an appealing draw for a few weeks as we ease back into the school year.

So I sat down and asked myself "How can I make this interesting for me, so that I can get myself into the game enough to make it interesting to them?" 

 As I sat and pondered, my mind drifted to a concept that I have been spending a lot of time considering lately: the idea of prep as play.

The Solo Roleplayer's Network

 I wanted to draw you attention to another project I have been involved in!

A while back I started talking about my great enjoyment of solo rpg podcasts, such as Tale of the Manticore, Legend of the Bones, and Stories from the First Watch.

Then I started my own: Swords Against Madness.

Since then I have joined a community of creators of these amazing solo-game inspired pods (as well as comics) and really found my tribe. 

Recently, with PJ Sack of A Wasteland Story as the idea man, and Jon from Tale of the Manticore as the voice of wisdom, and me as the tech monkey, over a dozen solo roleplaying podcasters set up a The Solo Roleplayers Network with a website where you can check out a wide variety of podcasts inspired by solo TTRPGs.

 There are so many amazing games being shared here (and I listen to all of them!)

• My own Swords Against Madness: psychedelic sword & planet played with Swords & Wizardry.

• Tale of the Manticore: a rich novel-like dark fantasy played with B/X D&D; TotM is the template on which most of the other podcasts are built for good reason.

• Legend of the Bones: a well-told dak fantasy heavily influenced by medieval Norse, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon history using B/X D&D.

• A Wasteland Story: a gritty, hard-hitting solo role-playing story set in the Fallout universe (matching tone with the original Interplay games) using the Fallout 2d20 role-playing game. 

• A Game of One's Own: featuring a range of indie TTRPG games played solo and turned into audio dramas to showcase them, including Mountaintop Isolation, Dragon Dowser, To the Bitter End, Pitcrawler, Death of the Author, Hedge Witch, Universe at Your Door, Forgery, Why We Fight, and Knockoff

• Errant Adventures: a series of solo games played in Ironsworn, Starforged, and Traveller, often intrigue-heavy science fiction adventures. 

• Stories from the First Watch: a grimdark fantasy with a rich story played in B/X D&D.

• Legends from the Fireside: an extremely old-school D&D adventure that really captures the 80s gaming vibe played with Old School Essentials. 

• Soul Operator: a surreal survival horror story focused on human relationships in the face of Lovecraftian horror played with Welcome to the Habitrails.

• Reflections in the Darksome Mirror: a tense and dark fantasy survival story played using the Darksome Mirror TTRPG. 

• Echoes of Eshaton: a post-apocalyptic primal punk scifi game played as short mini-series and snapshots that build on each other to paint a picture of a world rising from the ashes with Degenesis.

• The Lone Adventurer: a high-octane manapunk spy and crime thriller using D&D5e, Blades in the Dark, Chasing Adventure, and Warbirds - changing system to suit the needs of the narrative.

• Roll by Myself: a long-form game that alternates between actual play and audio drama based on it featuring two-session plays of solo journaling games such as Grandpa's Farm, Blood on My Name, and Deadline: A Clockwork Press. 

• The Chronicles of Nephes: an high-fantasy epic with intense storytelling played in  Nuovarden 

• The Solo Roleplayers Podcast: A podcast that is a mix of actual plays, interviews, and how-tos on playing solo TTRPGs. Includes playthroughs of Shadowdark, Forbidden Lands, Starforged, and Crown and Skull,among others.

And more being added all the time,

A World-Building Experiment: Heroes & Homelands (pt. 3)

 Over the past two weeks I have created a simple D&D retro-clone called Heroes & Homelands that is intended to be easily copy/pasted and edited to make new bespoke games as I need them. You can get the current version of it in .PDF here, or in .PDF, .html, .odt, and .docx formats in a PWYW bundle on itch.io.

Then I sat down and brainstormed a campaign I called "Into the Mistlands", a surreal magical adventure into something like a weird psychocosm. Here is the pich:

Trans-Real News is Complete at 41 (Gamable) Episodes

I wanted to point my readers once more to my podcast Trans-Real News. It is one of the main reasons why this blog is being so scant lately. And I hope that you will find that it was a worthy diversion. It is now complete with 41 episodes averaging about 8 minutes in length.

Trans-Real news is my surreal science fantasy comedy audio drama. It follows the lives of the cast of a daily news show as they attempt to report on a world where time, space, and reality has malfunctioned. Please to things like rampaging hordes of barbarians coming back through time too eliminate people they think made humanity weaker, much of the Monterey Bay area of Northern California turning into a swamp full of Carboniferous life forms, Los Angeles turning into a shining 1950 science fiction-style Utopia, and a hive mind of talking insects taking over hollywood. 

If I were to try to describe it, I might do so as a Murphy Brown and meats Bill & Ted, while a selection of comics from Heavy Metal play out in the background. 

Throughout the series, I make a lot of references to Dungeons & Dragons. There are even a couple of scenes of the characters playing it. And one of the things I have tried to do with it is make sure that it is gamable.:

I tried to create a podcast where every episode might give a dungeon master six or seven new ideas for adventure hooks or strange events in their campaign world. 

Throughout it, I also  did a lot of World-Building, and there is definitely a setting all its own there where modern people are facing fantasy and science fiction dangers while trying to learn to navigate time travel, alternate dimensions, and the world where magic is coming into its own. 

It is my intention to start working on a setting book for it based on an in-world book a couple of the recurring characters wrote. I would love feedback from my readers as to whether or not this is something they would be interested in. 

I will post the trailer here. You can find it on most of your podcatchers, such as spotify, youtube, Podcast Addict, and itunes. 

If you have a few hours to spare, I would love to have a chance to entertain you!

Example of a World-Driving Rumor Table for a Sci-Fi Game

I am starting a game with my wife in the same setting as my Starfarer game. I needed to set up a starting star system and space station to use as a home base. 8 have some big mysteries and ideas to work with, but I decided to let automated tables do the rest:

I created a star system using the Donjon Star System Generator 

Once I had a star system, I went through and made some notes about how people would live and operate on each of the planets, if they would have a reason to be at them at all.

I came up with a name of a cantina and a marketplace, and a few characters who would be doing vital functions about the space station.

Then I ran the Donjon space jobs generator. I could have also used the space job generator from the Science Fiction Codex of Lists 2e, which I have also used heavily in my solo gaming.

I went through the list and deleted a few repetitive entries. I renamed some characters and to change their species to add a little variety and fit my larger setting. Then I tucked that away in a GM notes document so I knew what was a trap, A scam, or had other difficulties.

I posted most of the jobs on the news board for the space station. Omitting any details of my giveaway surprises, and re-writing them with fees and contacts. 

I then added some flavor posts: a spaceship for sale, but entertainment event, and a couple of items sales to give the sense of the space station as the center of commerce in an active star system.

For every inhabited planet,  I added one or two "flavor jobs" to give a sense of what goes on on that planet. For example, Veles V is a highly volcanic world with a colony on a moon that does experimental hostile environment mining. I got the idea from the fact that it had a moon, and was a volcanically active Rock Planet. Advertising for mineral scanning and engineers to help them work on hostile environment mining Tech seems like a great way to describe that without telling the players what goes on on that planet. 

Likewise, Veles VIII is an ice mining planet with some eccentric, geeky characters turning it into a anarchist party planet. Adds for courtesans, casinos, rock bands, and dangerous sporting events seemed like a great way to get that impression.

In the end, with a little art and flavor added, I've ended up with a very interesting document that I will have beans to the calm link of the player characters when they arrive at the station. It will give them a pretty solid setting with over a dozen hooks in one swoop.

Anything the PCS don't pursue, if it doesn't have a timer already built in, I will give a cumulative 1-in-6 chance of changing or disappearing and being replaced every week (rolling new items from generated tables.)

Here's my final result. (The original tables will follow.)

---

WELCOME TO VELES STATION

Please check in with Sergeant Lōm after arriving.

Thirsty? Say hello to Itha-Q6 and Brenna at Bubble & Fizz! Genuine Earth and Uzz-III cuisine.

VELES STATION NEWS

Using AI Art for TTRPGs

So here's a controversal topic that will annoy the Hell out of some of my readers.

Recently I have run across several controversies over the use of AI artwork in TTRPGs. One was over a module that I reviewed where the creator used AI-generated Art on a cover and was positively brigaded for it.

Another was my recent review of the OSR game Beneath the Sunken Catacombs. I rarely go a month before I see absolute mayhem explode from some quarter of Twitter or another about someone using AI art in their product. Selling a TTRPG product that includes AI Art is guaranteed to draw backlash.

Review: The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg

The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg
Cover Art by Ken Fletcher

Authors: Greg Svenny, Griffith Morgan,  & D.H. Boggs
Publisher: The Fellowship of the Thing Ltd.
Game Engine: OSR Compatible 
Marketplace: Limited Kickstarter Release

 Back when he was researching the movie the secrets of Blackmoor, Griffith Morgan was lucky enough to interview a number of the players and DMs who ran the first handful of Dungeon crawling campaigns from the Twin Cities wargaming clubs. During his interview with David Megarry, Megarry Presented him with a mystery dungeon map. While it was clearly not the work of Dave Arneson, it had the signature sharp angles and broad hallways of the early Twin Cities dungeon maps. As the Fellowship of the Thing team did more research on the mystery map, they discovered that it was in fact the map of the dungeon beneath the Castle of Tonisborg by Greg Svenson.

This dungeon had been used during an early play test of Dungeons & Dragons, and may well have been the 2nd dungeon crawl created after Arneson's Blackmoor. The island and city of Tonis were even canonically a part of Arneson's world of Blackmoor. 

The dungeon itself was thought to be lost: its creator, Greg's Svenson, had lost the original dungeon map and notes when a cleaning lady had assumed that they were wastepaper and tossed them out. He had forgotten that he had given a Photocopy to Megarry (who had moved away) months earlier. This was in a box along with some of the original playtest materials for the game that would be later released as Dungeons & Dragons.

When the Secrets of Blackmoor was kickstarted, a limited series of ornately-bound books in ethically sourced paper were offered as one of the higher-tier backer rewards. Only around four hundred of the books were made as a collector's curiosity.

A few months ago I got into a Twitter conversation with Griffith Morgan about the book, and how I wished that there was a commercially available copy. It looks like an amazing text, but collectors were already reselling at $300+.I asked him if it was possible to have a paperback version made, a sentiment that was echoed by a number of other RPG commentators on Twitter.

In the fall, of 2022, the Fellowship of the Thing production company Kickstarted a limited-run paperback version listed as The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg, and as I led the charge of OSR bloggers,  designers, and commentators  in requesting the book be made, I would be a complete asshole if I didn't review it.

And I got a hell of a lot more than I expected.

Let's Build an RPG! Dragonette (WIP, pt.1)

AI Generated baby Dragon
by Alana Jordan
Pixabay License

 So, my four year-old is getting very jealous of the time I spend playing Basic Fantasy RPG with his big brother, and demanded that I teach him how to play. Naturally,  I reached for a copy of Tiny Dungeon 2e, but when I explained that he only needed the six sided dice, he protested:

"I want ALL THE DICE!"

So, I started making something up on the fly in my head that I knew would suit his tastes,  be simple enough for a four-year-old to learn, but use ALL THE DICE. And while I was at it, I wanted to make it a more-or-less OSR Compatible game for my own ease-of-use and to prime him for more complicated games later.

So I started playing and developing the rules as I went hobbledehoy from mechanics I love. It took me about 10 minutes to decide all of these things, but a couple of hours to write it all down, between sessions of packing, unpacking, cleaning and moving that has consumed my entire life for the last few weeks.

My working title for this project is:

Dragonette

PANZA

 I want to give a well-deserved signal boost to "Grim" Jim Desborough's latest project, PANZA.

Once the OGL 1.1 nonsense broke he sat down and spent two weeks rephrasing every section of the 5e SRD so that they were no longer copyrighted to WotC, and released them into the public domain.

That's right, the entirety of the 5th edition rules in a copy/pastable format. Free and remixable,

PANZA

I am amazed at the sheer amount of work "Grim" Jim was willing to put into this project for a hobby that has not treated him well. Thanks Grim!

In Case You Missed It, volume 2

 In Case You Missed it is an irregular feature I intend to use to draw your attention to older OSR creations that, if you are a late-comer like me you may have missed  some pretty amazing content. Here's a couple more that I recently picked up that I wanted to share.

Open Culture OSR-ish Games

 I am not going to make too much comment on the folderol over OGL 1.1. I would rather develop a "wait and see"  approach. I've signed Grim Jim's petition on change.org, and opined a bit on Twitter.

Going forward, if OGL 1.1 is released, and looks like the io9 leaked document, I expect that some beloved OSR projects are simply going to be left as is, and no one will make further compatible material under their license, because their license requires inclusion of OGL 1.0a. Others will do a re-write to distance themselves a bit more from old D&D and put forward a new edition that is not under any version of the OGL, is released as a Creative Commons project, or with their own open license. After all, the OGL was always a voluntary inclusion.

Tool Review: Dungeon Alchemist

 Dungeon Alchemist by Briganti SV is a tool I have been watching since I first saw a Kickstarter for it a little over a year ago. It is a map drawing tool designed specifically for TTRPG mapping.

When I saw it was in early access on Steam, I put it on my wish list. My younger brother, Level 0 Luke, pulled through for me, and it is a lot of fun to use.

Here is a map I have designed with my son's as a larger-scale example of what can be done with it:

Much of this map is animated with sparkling water, crackling electricity, and turning water wheels when actively I. The program works a lot like Dungeon Scrawl: You choose an overall room style, such as castle, village, desert settlement, or ruin, and a terrain type. 

Book Review: Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master

Author: Michael Shea ("Sly Flourish")
Publisher: Self-Published
System: Mostly System Neutral (w/ some focus on D&D5e)
Marketplace: Amazon, DrivethruRPG

 Here's a Confession for you: I have a hard time deciding how to best plan a session.

When I was in elementary and junior high I would occasionally draw a map and part-roll-, part-choose- a treasure hoard. I gave out more magic items than I should have, but they were usually the weirdest, most situationally useful, odd, or simply off-beat custom magic items I could choose. I ran a fusion of AD&D and BECMI D&D, with occasional forays into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Palladium Fantasy RPG.

In Highschool I ran mostly AD&D2e, RIFTS, and Shadowrun 2e. I did almost nothing for prep. I ran it off the cuff, and didn't sweat treasure. I just rolled on the treasure tables occasionally, but mostly ignored it.

When I was in University, I managed to create a more balanced approach of at least writing down the names of a few NPCs and the major points I wanted to handle. I prepped treasure that might tempt PCs in one hoard per session, and made sure the bad guys had some interesting loot. Of course, at that point I was running Shadowrun 3e most of the time, which, contrary to popular opinion, is a really easy game to run on the fly. And occasionally HōL, which is inimical to planning.

The Disease

But then, along came Dungeons & Dragons 3e... and the game was somehow a bit traumatic to me. D&D3e had a Challenge Rating System, and for some reason, I thought the idea was so cool (maybe because I had TPKed a few parties on too-hard encounters,  and made a few adventures that were way too easy early on) that it became my obsession in adventure design. I also had problems when my players fell way behind the power curve from lack of appropriate treasure. I spent a huge amount of time on the D&D forums trying to figure out how to make best use of CR and treasures by making sure I was keeping within the parameters of "game balance."

Whenever my players found treasure, I would grind the game to a halt as I rolled the treasure hoard during a break. I eventually resolved to pre-plan a lot more of the game to avoid that.

My Go-to Places to Hunt for Art

Bisqit's Brandy poster
by Alphonse Mucha
Lithograph, 1899

As an amateur indie RPG developer, I want to be able to include art in my books. I want them to look beautiful. I want the benefits of easier absorption, reader inspiration, and desirability that good art adds to my work.

However, I don't make a great deal off of my creative work. The proceeds of my modules and manuals thus far have gone to getting more books for review on this website.

I have a long way to go before I can leave something as visually interesting as I would like that is full of commissioned artworks.

This means I spend a great deal of time hunting for artwork to use in my books and modules. Thankfully, I've had some good tips over the years. Guilherme Gontijo's "How to Make Cool RPG Pamphlets" was a good starting point for me. Since then I have slowly expanded my selection of resources. Below are some of my favorite places to find Art for my role playing books at low or no budget.

In Case You Missed It, volume 1

 I am a relative latecomer to the OSR, and it means that I have missed a lot.

Blissful Ignorance

For decades, I enjoyed my gaming hobby in relative isolation. I have never been to a convention.  I only read Dragon for a brief stretch from 1992-1995, I have only played a few sessions of Shadowrun Missions at my FLGS. And while I was pretty active on the official D&D forum for about three years, I didn't pay much mind to hobby news, and didn't stay with it when they migrated the servers in 2005. 

In general I have been content to play Dungeons & Dragons, RIFTS, GURPS, Mage, and Shadowrun  (with the odd game of HōL) with close friends and family, and be done with it. You can be very happy in this hobby ignoring what is going on behind the scenes.

When Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition came out, WotC let slip on a podcast that two years worth of D&D3.5e products: the second round of Complete X, Races of X, the PHB II, and The Book of Nine Swords had all been just playtest material for 4th edition; they had used the culture of heavy rules chatter they'd fostered in the forums to turn them into a test lab, and had never really intended to support the material in those books after the edition rollover. I was incensed, and started looking for alternatives to D&D. I opted for Patfinder because it was familiar and compatible with my 3e collection. 

I didn't discover the OSR until I had two small children, and couldn't get very much gaming in. I found that 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons was simply too cumbersome a system, and you couldn't actually accomplish a lot in the little time that I had for gaming. I wanted a game where you could get a lot more done in the time I had. And I remembered how quickly things moved back when I was a kid playing AD&D I'd remembered hearing about Labyrinth Lord,  and started looking for mire info. And so it was just a few weeks before I started this blog that I got interested in the OSR. But this means that I have missed over a decade of cool stuff.

Xen Maps

 I recently picked up Campaign Cartographer 3 and have been teaching myself how to use it, so that I have an easier way to make maps for the adventure modules I like to put out into the world that I don't have to worry endlessly about the license for.

As an experiment I decided to do two maps for my Xen campaign.

AD&D Treasure Types from 1e to 2e

Treasure cards from Dungeon!
©️1980, TSR, Inc.

UPDATE: I found that there was some confusion with my original sources about which edition was which in terms of when thematic treasure types were used. AD&D was conflated with OD&D in a few places. I have reworked the article to reflect the editions more accurately.

 I recently treated myself to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide.and the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual in an attempt to create an optimal Dungeons & Dragons experience for my play style and module writing. Assassins and Monks, weird Gygaxian prose, xp for gp, and more monsters than you can ever possibly use. This was an excellent plan with one major flaw:

Treasure Tables.

In AD&D the Random Generation by Treasure Type tables were in the Monster Manual. In AD&D2e, the table was in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Ergo, I have no table except the one in my Rules Cyclopedia, which I know is mathematically not really lined up with AD&D.

So, I decided that I needed to take a deep dive into the first and second edition treasure types to understand how they worked and which I should be using for my game. I also immediately got an idea for a cool project.

The AD&D Treasure Types

I am going to preface this by saying that I did a lot of reading from some awesome people, such as a number of posters on Dragonsfoot.org. I have a bibliography at the end of this article. I also was fortunate enough to find the original AD&D tables on GM's Binder. 

Low Reproduction of Tables

And this was fortuitous, as most retroclones do not reproduce the treasure type system. The first retroclones tried very hard not to exactly reproduce any tables, as they were worried that this would be a legitimate grounds for complaint and compromise the legal harbor they were attempting to establish. When it came to the random treasure table, this became a problem. OSRIC simply tossed the whole system. So did Swords & Wizardry, which offers an alternative system that gives approximately the right gold for Dungeon encounters. 

This has become a sort of tradition: like descending AC, treasure types are one of the first things to be pitched or simplified.

Fungibility of the System

ESP Medallion Card from Dungeon!
©️1980, TSR, Inc.

Treasure Types as a system actually pretty easy to toss. Types A-I are the Treasure found in wilderness encounters only if a large number of the creatures are found (close to the maximum number), and then backtracked to their lair. 

For some monsters, like orcs, you are going to find way smaller numbers of them in dungeons than the 3-300 you might find outdoors. If you find an in-dungeon lair with a dozen or so orcs, such as in Keep on the Borderland's Caves of Chaos, You don't use Treasure Types at in that case instead, you would roll for a treasure appropriate to the dungeon level.

It's only when you run into a monster lair for a monster primarily found in dungeons,  like a mind flyer, that treasure type comes into play in AD&D, although a level-appropriate treasure can be substituted at the DM's option. It's no wonder OSRIC omits it.

Strange Ways & Queen of Decay on DTRPG

 March was a really productive month for me. I released two books that month: The Queen of Decay and Strange Ways. I decided to leave them up exclusively on Itch.io for two months before uploading them to DriveThru RPG. As of midnight they went live on DTRPG.

Strange Ways

Strange Ways is a collection of six magic-using classes for an OSR System, each with a unique alternative magic system that can either be used in tandem with- or as a replacement for Dungeons & Dragons' traditional Vancian magic system. The classes are;

• Alchemist - bombs, potions, poisons, and useful creations.
• Incinerator - Master of wielding fire as a tool and weapon alike.
• Psion - A simplified psionic class inspired by a mix of AD&D and D&D3e design.
• Sorcerer - A freewheeling magician who invents spells on the fly, but who's magic can malfunction in dangerous ways.
• Voidwarped - Lovecraftian cultists who gain powers through supernatural mutations as they slowly transform into an alien monster 
• Witch - A spellcaster that binds bizarre spirits to create a dazzling collection of strange effects.

Find it on DriveThru RPG here!

The Queen of Decay

The Queen of Decay is a mix of Hex-Crawl and dungeon adventures set in a psychedelic swamp for Low Fantasy Gaming that serves as an introduction to Stephen Smith's World of Weirth setting, which will soon be published as a complete setting book and LFG ruleset.

Characters are racing the clock through a poisonous swamp that bends their perceptions to save a dream priestess before she is driven made by a desperate and dangerous necromancer. If the PCs don't hurry, the priestess will be driven mad as she is forced to read the dreaming minds of ancient undead snake cultists.

Queen of Decay was originally created for the OSR Supplement Jam.

Find it on DriveThru RPG here!