This is a map of Moordegoet, other of the two harbor cities in Island Of Yingvaerd. You only can access the harbors, and the island, with galleons riding a giant whale. 

Check out what other material I have posted at Patreon!

The Great D-oom spring sale at RPGNow!

D-oom Products is celebrating spring with a big sale on both pdf and pod products at RPGNow! Expires 30/04/2016.

Crypt Of Doom: PDF $6.50  $3.50 | POD $13.10 $9.90

Mead & Mayhem: PDF $1.00 $0.50 | POD $4.02 $3.39

Temple Of Greed: PDF $1.70 $1.00 | POD $4.47 $3.39

The Mask Doom: PDF $0.69 $0.39

There are also pay-what-you-want titles available. You decide the price!

Dragon Union

Lohikäärmeliitto

Pamphlet 1: Fields Of Forsaken

D-oom Products has a new partner, meet Sotakone Miniatures

Only after meeting Sotekone's Jan "Häkkis" Spinner twice, I was determined to make them my partners. And it happened. D-oom Proudly presents Sotakone, who will stock me with all kinds of neat items, including dice!

Even though Sotakone Miniatures is a Finnish company, you can benefit from their great stocks and knowledge. Wargames, miniatures, dice, collectible card games, they got everything covered!

If you happen to be a Finn (or visiting Turku), you can step in their store at Tuureporinkatu 19n (inner ward). But if Turku is too far from you, you can visit their website to satisfy your needs at sotakone.fi.

Sotakone Store, "The Bunker"

Store.

Gaming area.

Soon I am about to publish a d30 Swampcrawl supplement for OSR games, and for basement prints there will be d30s bundled, which Sotakone provide for me. Without them, getting these special and lovely dice would have been so much harder, and more expensive!

[Review] Pile of Matt Jackson's (Chubby Monster Games) products reviewed

I have quite a few products from +matt jackson I review now. Matt Jackson is a great rpg cartographer, but he also writes awesome material. You can check out what coolness he has to offer at his blog, too. His material is OSR compatible. Here are his publications reviewed, that I own:

Kanthor's Den

Get it from RPGNow.

This adventure location is easy to throw in on your campaign on almost any fantasy setting you are running. Adventurers might want to help the people out, get rid of monsters being monsters or for cash. This adventure is encounter based, so it does not only read easy, but is also easy to run. There are four encounters where one is a dungeon and the final is the conclusion. Even though the dungeon is short, it is an exciting location to explore. Players might advance to slay every monster, but sometimes not every monster is wise to slay...

Well written, fun, short, easy to throw in with minimum preparation. Perfect to be around for those game nights when the main campaign for a reason or another doesn't advance as it should.

Moleskin Maps Volume One - Five

Get them from RPGNow: I, II, III, IV, V

Moleskin Maps are collections of different kinds of maps for you to use in your campaigns. Each volume contains 10 different maps and every map comes with an extra page where you can fill all the information to make an adventure location of your own. You get to develop the location name, background, key locations within, wandering encounters and treasure, not to forget personalized Game Master's notes.

These are great packets for those who like to build up their own adventures, but lack of mapping skills. Well, because Matt's maps are gorgeous, even mappers can enjoy them and only fill in the blanks. Dungeons, ruins, buildings, villages and wilderness are waiting for your creativity!

Side Treks 01: The Crossroads Of Spyley

Get it from RPGNow.

The Crossroads Of Spyley is a small location traveler's could rest at and fill in their equipment. Characters are easy to get to this location, not only because there is The Forest of Ruins nearby (not fleshed out, but you can throw all kinds of short adventures and dungeons there), but also because there are three adventure hooks to get to Spyley included.

These are the small products that come in handy. When you need a place, that is not a big town, in the middle of nowhere or along the way, this is a great product.

Side Treks 02: The Village Vol I.

Get it from RPGNow.

As the first Side Treks is a small location of three houses, the second one is a little bit larger; a tiny village this time. All five houses are well described and come with color maps. What I like, there are many random tables, for example stables have tables for what type of steeds are currently available and is the steed broken or not. In the village there are also fairies for sale, and more!

All maps came also in black and white for those who don't want to print in color.

Conclusion...

I say this once more: Matt Jackson draws great maps, and his writing is great. All his products are small in size and content making them easy to throw in your campaign as additional material or filler. I can recommend all of them, but you can for sure find what you are looking for. If you want to write dungeons and content, you have blank maps to do that. You also get a small filler adventure, or locations to use for characters to interact in.

Matt's stuff are a no brainer. Affordable price combined with high quality and many, many 5-star reviews make Chubby Monster Games products a great addition to your Game Master's folder of sweet material.

My response to Facebook post "I am a horrid DM"

In Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition group at Facebook Douglass Tanner posted this:

"I am a horrid DM.

1. I use a screen.
2. I fudge dice rolls (both in favor and against the characters, to promote more strategy)
3. I don't give them details they did not look for.
4. I use encounters that are under them, over them and in range of them.
5. I give few magic items out, and when I do its random.
6. I give out lots of $ and allow them to try and find an item or buy one. With % roll that it even exists in the city/town they are in.
7. i do not use modules, I use a home made world every time.

Here's what I do, based on those seven points:

1. I use a screen to cover things that players are not supposed to see, like my notes, modules, and things like that. I do not use screen as a wall between me and my players. We all play the same time, it's just that I got information players shouldn't see to keep things interesting for all of us.
2. I do not fudge die rolls. I roll open always except when player characters don't know the outcome (surprises and such things). I keep things fair, players play by the rules with their characters and they don't fudge, so I don't fudge. There is extra danger and flavor in decisions to make, when they see how hard the enemy hits them, for example. And if the damage kills the character, they know that dice decided it, I did not.
3. I give them details they did not look for, if their character for a reason or another should reasonably find those details. I do understand, that players cannot know everything their character knows. Dwarves have natural sense for certain things, like elevations of a dungeon, so I do give them that information. They don't have to ask it every 10 feet they explore. Also the player might not always know what his character is capable of, so I give them information, because their character know it for sure. This also in many cases helps the game not to be stuck when players don't "find" something they need to advance. Naturally, sometimes they don't find it, but if it is logical for their character to "find" it, I'll give them the information.
4. I too give them encounters from easy to extremely challenging. The world around them doesn't revolve around them. There are things they are not meant to conquer. Sometimes they just need to know when to run fast, or try diplomacy. If they knew that every encounter I presented was in range of their characters and they knew that 1/4 of their resources would be used in every encounter, the game would be dull. No surprises, no awe, no fear.
5. I give what magic items are in a module I run, as I have chosen to run that module. I do give other magic items also, but they fit the campaign most of the times. Sometimes, if someone's character sucks a lot and she doesn't find the game fun because of that, I might give a magic item that helps her enjoy the game a bit more. These occasions are rare. Magic items are not a resource you are supposed to collect to match the campaign world. Magic items are special.
6. I prevent to give lots of $ to keep the game interesting and challenging. Also I want them to have at least one motivation, if nothing else: wealth. Sure, if the campaign I run is around building a stronghold or a kingdom, that is a different story. Also money is not an automatic power boost, wealth has consequences.
7. I run my games usually in homebrew settings, because I am lazy to learn the setting someone else wrote. I also don't want player's meta data be greater than mine ("that's not how it was in sixth book chapter eight!"). I love world building, and what's better way (for me) than build the world during the actual play! I write necessary details, otherwise I am scarce. I let players join the world building ("you asked about this village what it's like if your character is from there, you tell me what the village is like. What kind of religion would your Cleric want to be a devotee of?"). I do use modules, I just pick those which fit my campaign the best, or I modify them to fit it. It is great fun for me as a Game Master to use something someone else wrote, and make it my game. I also make adventures myself, and also go with the flow without preparations to make things interesting and surprising. Random tables are always a fun addition to make something new and unexpected easily! Keeps Game Master's mind sharp.

I found this picture from http://meeplesgames.com with Google picture search.

There!

Now it is your turn to answer these questions based on that Facebook post. How do you run games? You can write your answer in the comments, or make a blog post of this topic. Remember to link your response, wherever you write it, to the comments, so I and my readers can find your answers.

New Kickstarter from Venger Satanis: The S'rulyan Vault

+Venger Satanis has a new Kicksterter, this time a huge map inspired by early D&D blue maps. And this map will be huge! You can print it at home on several sheets, or take it to your local print shop to get a big map!

But not only a map, you'll also get a pdf for generating random content making each adventure into the S'rulyan Vault unique!

This project is already backed and now we are aiming at the stretch goals:

• same map with "realistic" background
• custom character sheet compatible with O5R
• four additional map quadrants
• everything for free for everyone (well, except for the backers, but we are the saints who make good things for the world)

The maps are drawn by a great talent, +MonkeyBlood Design.

If you are not familiar with Venger's work, he writes awesome swords & sorcery material with strong eldrich and Mythos feel. He has more unorthodox material than your average D&D with elves and hobbits adventuring and doing nice things. You can check his publications at RPGNow and read his thoughts at his blog. Monkeyblood's stuff can be found here.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1575519826/the-srulyan-vault

"This is by no means finished, it's just a starting point for the blue map that Glynn's been working hard at.
Looks pretty neat, though..."
Quoted from the campaign page.

[Patreon] Travel to Yingvaerd

Yingvaerd, "Crying Dragon", is an island located to northwest from the mainland. Only way to reach it is by sea, but it is not that simple. Only galleys are sturdy enough and captains leading them are Clerics devoted to a God living in the sea between mainland and Yingvaerd.

Even though this is written for my default setting for Patreon material, this is easy to throw in any campaign setting as long as there is sea and a location to travel to!

You can download the material from my Patreon page.

2 painters, 1 brush. Started painting minis after 18 years

Finally I did what I have wanted to do for a long time; bought miniatures paints at Luminyrkki from Sotakone Miniatures. Last time I painted in the 90s I used Citadel's colors, but these I bought are The Army Painter. I am not the best guy to tell how The Army Painter compares to Citadel, because it's a long time since I painted actively, but I like the feel and color of these paints. They are quite affordable and the tubes are very great compared to pots. It is easy to measure out the paint one drop at a time, or you can pop the tube open and dip right in. And I think the colors are easy to mix.

If you are interested in this brand, you might find this blogpost useful.

One interesting and fun thing is, that I also got my girlfriend to try painting - for the first time ever. She did a really good job in painting her first mini, a Space Crusader ork! Unfortunately I didn't buy extra brushes, so we had to take turns to paint our guys.

Enough chatter, here's the pictures!

Guys painted. In this picture you see the tubes. The color range is small, but enough, as you can always mix the paints. It's easy. But the set lacks gray which is a big shame! In this box you also get some instruction tutorials, which should get you started.

Tres painted hombres. Greenskins are from Space Crusade, the skeleton was included in the wargames paint set.

My girlfriend's ork. First mini ever she painted.

My gretchin otherwise done but lacking facial details.

I think I glue some extra fine sand on bases and paint it grey. Grey because there is no grass in hulks.

This skeleton needs base painted, and he's done!

Now we have bought new brushes and bigger bottles of white, black and gray from a hobby crafts store.

Tower Of Tremors play report

Last Sunday I decided to run Tower Of Tremors for my girlfriend using The Black Hack rules. You can find Tower Of Tremors and lots of other material in Crypt Of Doom - A Compilation of Patreon Supported 2015 Material available both in pdf and print-on-demand.

This post has spoilers of the adventure, so proceed with your own risk.

My girlfriend rolled four characters.

• John Wayne the warrior
• Ragget The Wise the thief
• Several Snakes the Cleric
• Tittie the Conjurer

The band of four traveling adventurers arrived to a remote town, where they found out that tremors have started when a weird ancient metal tower activated one day. They were promised 500 GP if they can find out what is going on at the tower and stop the tremors. To the tower they ventured.

The tower is four storeys high and made of unknown metal. Next to the security door there is a buttoned panel with unknown alien symbols, and above the door is a crystal. Fell careful buttons pushed did nothing, so John Waybe decided to hit the crystal with his two-handed axe. He missed it few times, when Several Snakes jumped in and poked it with his 10 feet pole. "This is how you hit it", he instructed. John Wayne tried again and cracked the crystal into pieces. Nothing happened. Back to inspect the panel, which opens the security door after some button bashing. They enter the tower.

If the Warrior didn't break the crystal already, there would been a 50% change to get blasted by it when entering the tower. The effect would have been damage and system shock which results penalty to dexterity based actions.

The first room has no light except what comes from outside through the opened security door. Some metal panels on the ceiling are loose, and random electric wires spark. The frame of the tower is visible which you can pass. There are also two elevators; one going up, another going down. The Cleric lights a torch and they take the elevator down.

In the basement level there is the mounting of the tower's frame, and on the mounting there is a large crystal size of a pony. On the crystal different kinds of alien symbols scroll. They investigate the crystal ball, but only Tittie can understand, that when the alien symbol values reach the peak, then a tremor occurs, and the values go back down only to continue rising. John Wayne tries to destroy the crystal ball with his two-handed axe, but the crystal ball is too tough and thick so nothing happens. Back up they go and pass the frame to the other side of the room.



After the frame the room is lit with blinking red lights. There are two elevators, down and up. In the middle of the room there is a scorched skeleton and in the corner there is a turret. Tittie understands that the turret is some kind of a "lightning rod" that has shot the unfortunate adventure. At the end is a door. Carefully they pass the skeleton to the door, which is opened by several small bots.

These little bots have different operations in the tower. They say "beel plip bleep", but when attacking, they go "BRLOP BRLEEP BLROP".

Behind the door the corridor splits and they take the right path. In the end of this short corridor is a room furnished with cozy sofas and seats and there are few tables, too. Dim blue light and music are sedative; all save for soothing effects, and Conjurer Tittie fails falling asleep. John Wayne slaps him, but Tittie remains asleep. They leave the room carrying Tittie out. When they get out, Tittie wakes. She wonders why her cheek is aching. They go to the other junction, only to find a storage room.

There are several metal closets illuminated by light blue light. All closets are closed, and there is a button panel with alien symbols on buttons with each of the closets. John Wayne tries random button bashing, but nothing happens. Each of them decide to start to investigate them, and smart Tittie discovers how to open them! Seven closets have random stuff in them (I should have randomly generate these rewards, but didn't as I started to run this scenario without any preparation. I'll use random roleplaying book's treasure generator for these goods, only redressing items as scifi).

After a nice haul of stuff and treasures they go back to the room where a skeleton is and take the elevator down to a basement level, where the other side of the tower's mount is. Twenty small bots operate it, maybe fixing or maintaining. They decide to leave these bots alone and go back up to take the elevator to higher level.

Only alive alien remaining
operating a control panel.

In this room there are four cryogenic freezing pods. Two remain closed and inside are one dead alien in each. Two pods are opened, next to the other lies dead alien and from the second opened pod wet footprints go to the other side of the room bypassing the frame. Thief Ragget The Wise sneaks to take a peek, but alien who operates a control panel notices him! The alien reaches his upper appendices to his forehead and focuses on mentally blasting the Thief! Thief loses temporarily 3 points of Wisdom and 3 points of Intelligence, but aliens suggestive commands don't affect him. Ragget shoots an arrow at the alien wounding him. John Wayne the Warrior plunges to attack the alien and Conjurer Tittie shoots it with magic missile, except he fails the spell. Alien operates his control panel and summons three bots which climb the tower frame from down below. Ragget shoots the alien again, but it doesn't die yet. John Wayne swings his two-handed axe at the little bots trying to hit two of them (Warriors can hit as many opponents per turn as their level, but as a first level character he can attack only one opponent. But the player wanted to hit two, so I let her do it with a disadvantage) bashing them into bits!

Alien, almost dead, uses his control panel to electrocute John Wayne (Youtube example) who falls flat paralyzed. Several Snakes the Cleric smashes alien's head and kills him. Tittie out of her spells smashes the last bot with her staff.

THE END OF PART 1.

My player was too tired to continue, but there is still interesting places left for the next time, like robot room, bot recharge and repairs and of course the top floor...

Actually, I'll generate the random treasure from the storage room right now for the next time. Just a second, I'll fetch a rulesbook.

And back! I decided to use Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, because I have never used it. I have barely read it! Table 84, page 133, gives treasure types letters. There are 17 letters for individual and small lair treasures, so I'll roll 1d20 (ignoring result 18+) to determine which treasure type I use for each closet.

The treasures in these seven closets are:

CLOSET 1:

• A scroll containing the following 7 spells: Wish (9), Fly (3), Reverse gravity (7),Forcecage (7), Invisibility, greater (4), Dimension door (4)  The spells can be copied on Conjurer's spell book. If the spell is read from the scroll, the scroll burns and all the spells written on the scroll are lost. (This helped a lot determining the random spells)
• A map of Carcosa
• Curse. When this scroll is read the reader is cursed. He suffers +1 to all Dexterity rolls until the curse is lifted.

CLOSET 2:

• 40 SP, 1 platinum

CLOSET 3:

• 400 GP

CLOSET 4:

• 8 potions: Clairaudience, Unknown (Delusion), Unknown (Poison), Oil of Air elemental invulnerability, Fire resistance, Super heroism (Warrior) x2, Levitation. 

CLOSET 5:

• 3 gems (1000 GP gem, 50 GP semi-precious, 100 GP fancy)
• 1 art object (10,000 GP)
• Magic sword +1 (xp 400)

CLOSET 6:

• 7 Platinum

CLOSET 7:

• Magic ring of Contrariness. Wearer is unable to agree with any idea, statement or action. Wearer's strength is 18.
• Robe of eyes. Can see in any direction, also invisible. Advantage to tracking. Light spell can blind the robe.

http://sharkinabox.deviantart.com/

Patreon news

I am going to make few changes where and how I publish material. I realized that it is silly to post creations I of Patreon to other blog (Wordpress' Crypt Of Doom). Why would I encourage traffic of Patreon material to a site that is not Patreon.com?

I do not know. But it is silly, and there is no advantage to it.

I have published the material for patrons first, and later for everyone to see. I have asked your opinion, and what I have gathered is that it's ok to post material immediately free for all.

From now on everyone can see and download the material I post here. The difference is, if you support me, you get the rewards!

I also added a new reward level called Compendium. There is only one available. The Compendium level supporter will each month get all the hand-drawn material sent to him! At first, Compendium reward will be everything hand-drawn this far!

You can find pdfs of what I have released this far from Crypt Of Doom, but from now on there will be no more updates to that site. Everything I release from now on, you'll find at my Patreon page.

Preparations to run The Black Hack online

I have already played few games online using Skype, Roll20, Google Hangouts and Google docs. Now I am preparing to run game like a pro!

I am running The Black Hack (my review), and decided to use it because it is lightweight and new. I have an online group for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, so I wanted to run something a little different yet OSR in compability and feel.

I also wanted to start the game with Where Is Margesh Blackblood? by +Tim Shorts, because it has so much in it from combat to great roleplaying opportunities. I've used it several times, and always love to run it.

A MAP

I am already familiar with the adventure I am about to run, so I don't have to make preparations for it anymore. This time I make an area map for it, though.

A quick drawing of the adventure's area ready for scanning.

After I scanned the hand-drawn map, I added some color with GIMP and text with paint.net.

Here is the map ready for action!

ONLINE TOOLS

Skype is what we use for communications. I am here at my house alone, three of the players are under same roof and the last player is at his place. We use Skype, because everyone has an easy access to it. We use video conversation, and text chat for some meta that is easier to write than explain.

Roll20 is used for dice rolling and for the map.

Here is the map, fog of warred, in Roll20 ready to be revealed for the players.

Trello is an online organizer notes program I use to keep track of the adventure. This is the first time I am using it, but even during pre-game preparations it feels extremely handy! It's easy to add and manage notes. I've got "lists" for house-rules (for quick referance), characters, adventure log and extra information there. Adding new lists and info is so quick and easy I think it won't slow the game down a bit!

My Trello notes look like this. More to come during the play!

Google Drive for hosting all kinds of images, like for NPCs to quickly share and locate.

PHYSICAL TOOLS

There already are quite a few windows open on my system, and even though I use two monitors, I don't want to use pdf viewers for rules and adventure. Also some oldschool notepad and pens are always needed.

I had to print The Black Hack pdf (waiting for the physical reward to arrive). I am lucky to own a printed copy of Where Is Margesh Blackblood? Index card on the top is a simple referance for Ascending to Descending AC. It comes handy every now and then.

HOW DO YOU RUN ONLINE GAMES?

What tools do you use? What is your preferred chatting platform? Do you use voice, video or text only?

Game report to follow...