Holy-Themed Desert Encounters for OSR Games

    New weekend, new table from Lands of Legends!

This week, I offer a d10 table with ten Holy Desert encounters for your OSR sandbox campaign with simple stat references for your classic game of choice, wether is Old-School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry, or any other clone of OE, B/X, or BECMI Dungeons and Dragons.

Use them to spice up your sandbox!

These are straight from the Areas section of Lands of Legends Holy. Check it out for hundreds more!

But before the table, a little reminder! I've wrapped the five Lands of Legends PDFs into one big sweet BUNDLE available for the duration of the holidays. Hope this counts for making it on the nice list!

So here's the table:

Deserts - Holy Encounters

1. Reverse Sphinx. This sphinx commands the group to ask her a riddle. Players have a few minutes to formulate one. If they can’t come up with a riddle, the creature attacks them. If she (and the DM) cannot answer in 1 minute, then the heroes have passed the test and can go, with the help and blessing of the creature. If the sphinx answers the riddle, she’ll be amused and ask for one more, until she cannot answer, or the group has amused her with three different riddles.
2. Dust Angel. A whirlwind of dust appears and disappears at a distance and seems to follow the group. Later, in the presence of a danger, the whirlwind will appear again, rising around the whole party, wrapping or hiding them from enemies, erasing their tracks or carrying them to a safe place. Inside the whirlwind, the heroes can see a gentle, smiling face.
3. Black Scorpions. The heroes spot or are approached by a black scorpion, as big as an arm. Any guide or native will tell them that it is a sacred scorpion and it mustn’t be killed, even if it tries to sting them. Actually (this is the natives' secret) their venom quenches all thirst and hunger.
4. Mad Hermit. This crazy, babbling old man, dressed in rags, feeding on locusts and desert dew, is the most powerful cleric the world will ever see. If only one could make him listen to reason. Only very patient players should find out the truth.
5. Prophetic Vulture. This big bird, black from the point of its beak to the talons of its feet, is a spirit of doom: it can speak, with a baby’s voice that comes out of its closed beak, and will only say the name of a place known to the characters, and then the sentence “...is doomed”. And it is true.
6. The Ark. In the midst of this arid region lie the remains of a huge, ancient ship. The wreck, preserved by the dry climate, has no masts. Inside there are large and small ramps and stalls and ancient marks of horns and claws. Gigantic parasites may still roam in the lower decks.
7. Living Icons. A gigantic temple stands in an area of rocky formations. Its priests are skilled sculptors and their worship is to create colossal statues of the gods, which they infuse with a sort of divine life-spark. Inside this sanctuary are the images of most known gods, which may be contacted directly to obtain responses or blessings.
8. Nativity. In a secret cave, three magicians have gathered from distant lands to officiate a forbidden ritual: the birth of a god, which will happen in 2d6 days! They have brought special substances, astrological diagrams and dozens of servants. Attracted by a light in the sky, shepherds of the area are flocking to see. What will the new god be like? Randomly determine alignment, morality and power of the new god or make it the avatar of an existing deity.
9. The Herald. A dense flock of red birds comes from the west. They gather in front of the party, assuming the appearance of a god speaking through twittering and fluttering of wings, resulting in a deafening roar (Save vs Spell or be deafened for 1d6 hours). Any god can speak  this “Herald". Today, it warns the group of some danger (roll the next encounter and anticipate part of it, or hint at the features of an area the party is likely to visit).
10. The Octahedron. The party has just found one of the octahedra, which are said to be tears of the goddess of dawn made into geometric crystals by the god of forges. Those who shake an octahedron in their hands before attempting a task will receive the aid of the gods: they can add d8 to a roll they are about to perform. As soon as the octahedron is shaken, it dissolves in a cloud of dust.

If you enjoy this type of content, check my other random tables posts, and my OSR stuff on DrivethruRPG: the Land of Legends series and my pwyw e-zines for Old-School Essentials: Wondrous Weavings Warped and Weird and Mysteriously Missing & Merrily Met!

My next pwyw Old-School Essentials e-zine will be released this month! To find out what it'll be about, and grab it as soon as it's out, follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Telegram!

Fairy Cities for OSR Games

   New weekend, new table from Lands of Legends!

A slow, frustrating Saturday with my kids going through yet another swab, and probably another week off from school because of several covid cases around. And even the school I work at has got half a dozen cases or more. So let's escape to some Fairy City!

This week, I offer a d10 table with ten Fairy Civilization areas for your OSR sandbox campaign with simple stat references for your classic game of choice, wether is Old-School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry, or any other clone of OE, B/X, or BECMI Dungeons and Dragons.

Use them to spice up your sandbox!

These are straight from the Areas section of Lands of Legends Fairy. Check it out for hundreds more!

But before the table, it's time for an announcement! I've wrapped the five Lands of Legends PDFs into one big sweet BUNDLE available for the duration of the holidays Hope this counts for making it on the nice list!

So here's the table:

Civilizations - Fairy Areas

1. The Floating Castle. This castle floats 200’ above the ground. It is home to the Three Archmage Brothers, served by 12 animated crystal statues and protected by 90 gargoyles. They travel through kingdoms researching knowledge, rare alchemical components and, very rarely, apprentices.
2. Goblin City. An accumulation of hovels, shacks and huts stacked on one another on many levels, around a network of muddy streets and alleys. Structures are built with a jumble of parts randomly juxtaposed, totally unsafe, and about to fall down. Bridges, roads and stairs, completely unnecessary, go back and forth without reason, with blind alleys and twisted meanders. Construction sites, scaffoldings and excavations are found everywhere, with the most unlikely workers. The Goblin Committee rules the city, hosting emissaries from distant tribes. Navigating the city requires an INT check, and failure may result in a monster encounter or a nasty cave-in or collapsing building (3d6 damage).
3. Modern Times. In this metropolis all the hard work is done by golems and mechanical servants; sewer oozes digest the waste, bulettes are used for digging tunnels and mines, the breath of dragons is employed in forges and alchemical workshops, rust monsters serve the scrap dealers and so on. Each monster in the bestiary has been tamed for a particular use, including many humanoids, who live in the nearby slum, while humans are employed as geometers, architects and superintendents. But who is on top of the hierarchy?
4. Webtown. This town hangs from magically protected ropes attached to the huge rocks at the sides of a ravine, because the region is so infested with wild beasts that the only safe place to live in is the air. Hundreds of hammock-houses in rope, leather and fabric hang over the abyss below, with rope bridges and ladders connecting the two sides of the ravine to the houses.
5. Armilla, Town of Nymphs. This once beautiful city has been abandoned for centuries. Among the ruins, the beautiful baths, aqueducts, fountains and basins work perfectly and do not seem aged by a day. Beautiful girls are often seen swimming in pools and fountains, disappearing at will in the pipes and reappearing somewhere else, at another point reached by water. Consecrated to the goddess of water, Armilla is inhabited only by this group of water nymphs, protecting it against invaders and the passage of time.
6. Of Giants and Men. This town is inhabited by giants, but there is also an entire population of humans. To the giants, the humans in the city are what mice are to men, hiding in caves, behind walls or under the stairs, pilfering from their larders, barns and cellars. The giants fight off men as parasites, or capture and cage them like pets. They also use big panthers to dig out their unwanted guests.
7. The Well of Wonders. This village is famous for its enchanted well: those who dare drink its water undergo some kind of change. Roll a d10. Each individual can only be affected once! 1-3: reroll a random ability with 4d6; 4: rejuvenate 2d6+5 years; 5: gain a random first level spell as a natural ability; 6: loose a level; 7: become immune to poison; 8: gain a level; 9: change sex; 10: randomly change race.
8. Slumbertown. This cursed village is generally avoided: all its inhabitants sleep and nothing wakes them up. No one grows old, nothing decays. If a visitor attempts to harm someone or take something, all visitors are teleported to the last bed where they slept, remembering their visit as a dream. The only way to lift the curse is to find an empty bed in the village and sleep for a whole night. Poltergeists will try to wake up the newcomers, so five rolls (WIS checks) must be failed. The witch that cursed Slumbertown might be displeased, though!
9. The Clockwork City. This whole city is a complex construct. Roads, stairs, walls, palaces and towers are wired together and can move and change configuration under the control of the City Masters for special needs such as sieges, wars, urban planning, curfews, and so on. 
10. Maple Town. This place, also called The Farmyard, is inhabited by anthropomorphic animals who follow a complex code of honor (carnivores cannot eat humanoid or humanized animals), trying to create a utopian society. They gather from around the world to formulate a common statute and an early universal declaration of animal rights, so the city is like a great parliament. Humanoids are welcome, but often viewed with suspicion.

If you enjoy this type of content, check my other random tables posts, and my OSR stuff on DrivethruRPG: the Land of Legends series and my pwyw e-zines for Old-School Essentials: Wondrous Weavings Warped and Weird and Mysteriously Missing & Merrily Met!

My next pwyw Old-School Essentials e-zine will be released this month! To find out what it'll be about, and grab it as soon as it's out, follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Telegram!

About a Groats-Worth of Grotesques

 A Groats-Worth of Grotesques is a big bestiary for OSR games.

I've received a print copy for review from the author George Edward Patterson. The DrivethruRPG print-on-demand version is a nice big A4 softcover book, counting 251 pages. It was released in May 2021.

From the DrivethruRPG blurb:

Being a SYSTEM-AGNOSTIC Role Playing supplemental treatise ON MONSTERS; which is to say a BESTIARY for your Tabletop Games of Fantasy. Styled in the manner of the Baroque Period; a Curiosity Cabinet of Creatures for enlivening the table!

The over 100 entries were gathered out of sundy authors, philosophers, physicians, and poets; sacred and profane. The illustrations are collages of diverse prints and emblems. From the lowly ant to the earth shattering Behemoth, the mundane dog to the alien Ch M G, this collection is a rollicking gambol through history and myth.

The blurb itself shows the (awesome, to me) baroque, anachronistic language style of the book, which aims at making it an in-world bestiary collecting information and rumors as they would be reported by sages and chroniclers of your fantasy world.

While the blurb describes it as system-agnostic, each creature entry includes simple game statistics (AC, HD, damage, and special features) which make them easily portable to most OSR games.

Things I liked:

• Art. Lots of it. Each creature entry is accompanied by at least one public domain image (engraving) which has been, in most cases, artfully photoshopped to better match the author's idea. Public domain engravings have a long tradition of cheap (and fascinating) art for RPGs, so this might sound as nothing new. But what's here is stunning: the quantity and variety of images is insane, and the quality of the alterations is stylish and serves the author's ideas very well.
• The baroque textual style. The book is presented as a XVI century bestiary: The book title and general introduction, and the first description of each entry feature a marked and remarkable baroque style, which obviously matches the art. The creature descriptions are particularly fascinating as they weave bizarre observations by a writing persona that is implied to be from the implicit game world.
• The general theme of the grotesque. The creatures presented can be divided in thee groups: ordinary creatures, "classic" fantasy creatures, and unusual creatures. The first groups features creatures such as ants, camels, bears and so on, and imaginary creatures. The trick in the book is that all of them have at least one unusual feature which makes them interesting and subtly weird. The same applies to "classic" fantasy creatures (these include Dragons, Hell Hounds, Leucrotas, Mantichoras, Giants, Griffins and others): all have a twist, a unique take, and often a series of variants which are often all you need to make your classic fantasy game feel fresh without turning its monster fauna into an all new, completely unfamiliar, world. The last group is made of creatures that are new. A few examples: Bishop Fish, Vegetable Lamb, Filth Licker, Haunted Umbrella, and the Wonderful Two-Headed Girl. These are brilliant and and are the incarnation of the grotesque theme. Surreal, otherworldly, somewhere between nightmare and fairy tale, and yet somehow with a very real feel to them.

In short: I'm impressed with this book, which deserves more attention than it's had so far.

I can see this book as an excellent resource for a series of OSR games: Old-School Essentials, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Sword & Wizardry, and any other post-clone like Knave or Maze Rats. Especially if you want to inject your "classic" fantasy campaign with bits of unusual, surreal, fantastic, horrific, surprising creatures, and even more so if you want to completely put aside classic creatures for new ones.

A final note on price. At the time of writing this, the A4, 251 pages softcover is priced a mere $13.99, which is a lot of bang for your buck, when compared with many other products with a much lower page count, and the PDF is $4.99.