Fantasy Adventure Journal Actual Photos

 Copies landed on my doorstep today! Here are photos of the actual product, cover, interior pages, etc.

Can there be too many charts? No!

 My latest call-in on the Vanishing Tower Podcast posed two questions. For those specific questions you can hear them at the front of the blog recording. Here are my answers, which I putting up.

The description of the game session watched was a less than optimal use of tables in a Dungeons & Dragons Game. The reasons why it is a poor use of a table are apparent, numerous and generally understood. So, I won’t dwell on that here. I have used a campsite set of charts in the OSR game I run. It was stuff from Wormskin zine. The PCs were deciding whether to travel in the wrong direction and take refuge at a village for the night or continue and hope for a suitable camp site in rough, rainy terrain. All for 50 men. They chose to move on and look for a suitable campsite. I rolled on a chart for this from the zine and told them what they found for use later. 

Notice I am not rolling to determine whether they have found a spot to camp. I’m rolling for what kind of campsite did they find. Finding the camp site and firewood is a forgone conclusion. I have decent charts which provide something I can use for descriptions and random encounters. If it does not, I shouldn’t be using it. And the roll, most importantly, will inform me if an interesting encounter happens in the night or is it dawn and time to get moving. I hope the tactile details I provided were enjoyable enough they pin the location for later use, but that is just icing on the cake if it occurs. We all did just add something to the campaign world, a camp site, all because the players made a choice and acted on the choice and details of possible results has been anticipated by the DM. So, whether on a table or from a block of text the information I'm throwing out there is in concourse with the game. It has a reason for being and is not wasting the player’s time.

As For the follow up question, no, there cannot be too many charts. Here is my thinking on this, the game designer included the tables and charts they believe should be used with the game. If I’m having trouble and frustrations with the amount of charts I need to reference, and I’ve given a good faith try in learning/running the system, then it isn’t a good fit for me as a DM. There is nothing inherently wrong with the game, I tried RoleMaster back in the day, but it was a backward fit for what I do at the table. But there were many other players who used it and enjoyed the game. They were able to use the tables in a learned way to make their play create what they were after.

Charts and tables, just like the rules, should fade in the background as everyone roleplays. As a DM I would rather be fluid and concise in the moment and not have to look back at anything. Charts, rules, previous history. This is a broad generalization of my goals at the table. But those three functions I have just mentioned are guiding principles, the charts are easy and fun to use, I rarely need to refer to the rulebook because use has got me using the game mechanics well, and previous history does not need to be looked up because everything has been so exciting everyone knows what important “stuff” to do right now!

Is the Cleric spell Protection from Evil too powerful?

This question, one of many from Mark, regular gamer and commentator on all things Vanishing Tower (VTP), is definitely an issue I put in the undecided box. And is a spell, much like Read Magic, which I struggle with cap-stoning with a definite and unequivocal opinion. The tendency for myself and players is towards specificity. The nebulous definition of “Evil” in a variety of fantasy relevant context is rendered more apprehensible with hard walls. Hard and fast definitions. “Elves are good, Orcs are evil.” Black is back and white is just alright with me, just alriiiight, oh yeaaah. 

But my game world, my fantasy campaigns tend to begin with the question, or nature, of evil relatively unanswered. Outside of societal norms defining moral and its opposite, evil, the nature of a roleplaying game is to have these big questions answered in play. And so is why everyone wants to know the answer to these type of questions before play, or when they come up.

So my answer is the bullshit one, it depends. What is the right call at the moment? Everything in a roleplaying game is case and or context dependent. Some one has to decide what is or isn’t evil in the game world and that job ultimately ends in the DM’s lap. My best efforts have come to a couple of “best practices” I’ve adopted for myself. Have the player define what their god considers good and evil. Accept it and incorporate their ideas into the pantheon developing. And when I say accept it I don’t mean make it all true. Just be super-mindful of it and you can be prepared for when you have something they believe their spell would protect them, and it doesn’t! If they really start to push on it sucking ask them if they have considered their god may not be correct in all things? Maybe their god is fucking with them? Maybe their god lied about this subject? It makes sense to attack, or frame, the PfE spell with less specificity on the front end because it preserves the fascinating feature of emergent play.

2019 in Review

Never did get around to this semi-quasi-generally-recurring blog post about what kind of gaming I have gotten up to over the last year. Starting to look like my company Christmas party, we usually get around to that in August. 2019, what the hell have I been up to. My first OSR module was released to great acclaim and mild sales. 26 copies to date. I think that is great for this project. The only part I fucked up was making the POD copy available on Lulu. Which means all the copies out there are all PDF's. I couldn't direct any sales over to Lulu. Too bad cause the physical copy isn't shabby at all. Proud of the work. It also had an editor which puts it above like 90% of the DIY game product being shucked on DriveThru. The other serious goal it accomplished is making sure 2019 wasn't a dud, as far as new product being released. Hate to see the Press have a zero output year. If you are not publishing anything you are not much of a game company are you?

I sold 131 of my own game products in total for the tidy some of $86.66 commission in 2019. This includes the novel war game Santapocalypse. I should look at these "card" capabilities at DriveThru, see if I can make some mounted, color counters you could cut up. Color matters in game products.  Or it would matter on this one I think. Nice poppy unit counters. Interestingly it is my first product released by another "company", Peryton Publishing, so that is strange. It definitely is the the way to live, have someone else publish for you. I was edited, got an original piece of art added to it. I just need someone to fetch me coffee and empty out my ashtray! Fucking big time baby.

The D&D conversion guides chugged along grossing a little over $1,000.00. leaving me with $849.00 profit. Lets see... Mark bought a t-shirt. I think they are cool cause it has my art on it.  I "monetized" the venerable blog with using affiliate links to DriveThru and that is a strange, stunning $148.00 in folks clicking thru and buying stuff on the site.  

Business aside, the actual part of gaming, the reason I am all in on DIY gaming stuff, was absurdly off the charts again. Not in volume of play but quality of play. 2019 saw me running only Rom'Myr Dying Earth, but it has spawned my most detailed fantasy world I've worked on yet. As is every other campaign I've run it has a direct motive, game challenge which I set out to accomplish and test the validity of. Rom'Myr is your standard high fantasy fare using Dungeons & Dragons to prove, at least to myself, the shit about D&D being good for only dungeon crawling, or it is only about combat, or it isn't good for telling stories or whatever drivel is being declared about the deadness of trad roleplaying conceits, is just that; shit. The end analysis I come to is shit players/gms make for shit games. I've taken the zero-to-hero, xp leveling for character improvement, counter-intuitive AC system of combat and put so much sword and sorcery meat on the bones that I'm satisfied with my most strident conclusions. I can use any system to give red in tooth and claw roleplaying adventure as long as I have two things; a firm grip on the genre to be run, and players who do shit. Interesting shit. They like talk with each other, work in character based on what the character actually does and don't tell you what their character is, they play the sum'bitch and who these imaginary heroes are comes to life in truly unique ways. I can't get invested in a game or character unless their is an opportunity to be surprised by the character's life and achievements waiting to be had. I won't go through the laundry list of preconceived bias built into critiquing the world's first, and most successful, roleplaying game I and my players obliterated in play. Suffice to say concepts such as immersion, in character, rich game world reacting to the players, player agency and self-directed adventure goals are pretty routine stuff around the Vanishing Tower game table.

Hitting the two year mark with this campaign has got me in the joyous position of thinking of conclusions, campaign endings. When does the campaign reach its end? My first two campaigns ended in the traditional manner of petering out with month-long breaks, rage quits, and changing personal schedules. This one though, Rom'Myr Dying Earth just might make it to a final resolution. A place where the character's stories are done, the last oaths have been uttered and the last betrayal suffered. Where the PCs get the just reward of fading into legend... It could happen. Maybe in 2020!

DFD Hits the Table

The virtual table, all my gaming these days is virtual. Online, video hangouts. And it has worked well, extremely well over (fuck me) 8 years now. I got hooked up on line with gaming again in 2012. And one of the most talked about adventure modules at the time was Death Frost Doom by James Raggi V. I passed on buying it at the time. I thought, what's the use? Everybody and their grandmother is playing it right now. Then some time later a new edition was released in some kind of package deal. I got Monolith, NSFW, Tower of the Stargazer(?) and the much talked about Death Frost Doom. Good adventure, I thought, for what it does. Evocative as all get out, and the possibility of world-ending events being triggered... Definitely good material in here to be used. But I haven't got a place to use it right now. In my current campaign. Some point I will, but it isn't today.

And there it has sat until this morning. My dowdy band of murderhobos got themselves into a scrape with a large horde of werewolves. The mercenaries had been overrun or had fled for their lives. The forest was well on its way to being engulfed in wind-driven flames and more werewolves were closing in. Murderhobos doing what murderhobos do, they fled. Not blindly. They had passed a boarded up hunting lodge before the terrible confrontation which had just shattered their armed troop. It looked sturdy enough. If they could just make it there, urge their wild-eyed horses on one last directed gallop, before the living fears of myth overtake them all.

The lodge is safely reached. It is not the cabin in the module. Here is a look at it;

Much bigger. 

Stocked with bear traps, hunting weapons like spears and bows. It is indeed a good spot to defend from. The rooms are quickly tossed and a trap door is found in the floor of the Great Room. There is also a thick book. It is pages on pages of names. They change over time, in fact the sweep of names covers thousands of years! The earliest names are in a language unknown. Not till the end of the book, representing the last two hundred years or so, are they comprehensible. These contemporary names continue until the last three pages where there are no signatures. Only row upon row of a bloody fingerprint. The blood now long dried these last few pages appear as some gory stamp book.

Heated discussions break out between the mercenary captain, the Marquee and Father Piedmont. The Marquee is adamant he will not quit the field until he has routed or captured the evil cultists behind rash of kidnappings. He seems in a complete state of denial over being attacked by werewolves. "Nothing but bandits in wolf skins!" I tell you, we go back there in daylight. You'll see."

Father Piedmont worriedly looks out one the Great Room's windows again and again. It is agreed the first thing to do is undue the padlock on the floor hatch and see what lies underneath. It is a 50' shaft down. Straight down into DFD! Fuck it, I'm using it. I'll figure out how to tie in the OSR cultists cum werewolves and their WolfMother petty-god later. If there is a later. 

To be fair, several players identified the location just in the first hall approaching the first door into the dungeon. But none of the players had actually played in it. Good, I'm getting to drag fresh souls through one of the most reviewed OSR modules to date.

And that is where we left it. They did get in to the first two rooms which has them in the large, evil encased chapel. And we did leave with some disagreement within the party on what the next move should be, but it is Mq. Chabentaeu's resolve to have revenge against these fiends (cultists) which seals the deal. No murderhobo is going to appear as a coward. Especially in front of an NPC!

So I'm pretty satisfied with this cold open for DFD. Plenty of detail within the book to tie the death cult's religion from the module to the leading adversaries currently running amok in the campaign world. I can work out these "pantheonic" loose ends. The Cleric and Paladin are feeling obliged to uncover the nature of the evil lurking here while the jewels and gems just found are keeping the thief and the assassin in the game. Oh, yes, we even have a 1st level character along. The player of tragic La Batard returned today with his gentleman thief and rake. An Averoigne fop who is good with his rapier. The cleric is 3rd level (damn that Bless spell would be useful to have) while the rest are 4-5 level dudes. Not fragile, but the groups magical firepower is currently found only in the paladin.

Two weeks until next session. I already have a good idea to tie this site location in with the already established big bads. Otherwise I just need to pour over the pages of this black masterpiece all over again. Weep for me not....

Perhaps a session report on the eve of a Feast of Blood

I am all pumped up for tomorrow's game so I will spend some of this nervous energy on a session report. 

The girl did pay, after all. Violet was handed over to her parents, the Marquee and Marquees de Chabentaeu, in a catatonic state, but at least in one piece. That's better than Liam Neelson did in A Walk Among The Tombstones. This netted the group 2,000 gp, a windfall they haven't seen since first session over a year ago! The Marquee, impressed with their gritty and grim bearing, offers them employment. His town is beset by kidnappings, missing persons and murder out among the farms. Merchants are leaving town. He needs to bring an end to these mysterious threats or he will lose his position of Warder of Le Frenaie. They have returned his daughter from these seemingly unknown kidnappers. Of course the Marquee has many questions for the PCs. It comes out the Marquee is a proud man, and set upon revenge against any who slight himself and his family name. They must lead him against the kidnappers. He will gather the militia. Piedmont has a mercenary troop the Golden Ray camped nearby. They shall provide the additional troops needed.  

The PCs say sure, they haven't much else in mind at this point, and arrange for rooms at The Crossed Swords. The local rat catcher is in the common room on a three-day bender. He is spending his "life" saving because the end of days is upon them. 

With the better part of the day and evening in front of them the group decides to pursue avenues of espionage. The local priest of Zotar deserves a visit. This Father Piedmont is obviously agitating for a vote of no confidence in the Warder. Perhaps they can weasel into his good graces as well. They are carrying a writ of authority they found, from the ArchBishop of Vyonnes himself! They show this purloined writ to the local Zotarian and let Piedmont know they expect his assistance if called upon. The mustering of the militia tomorrow is discussed and Piedmont decides he will join the hunt!

Lumin catches a street urchin for some errand duty. The poor, dirty wretch is writing some graffiti on a barn wall. It says "She's not my mommy!"

"Here boy, take this missive to the Marquee." The one-handed cleric gives the boy the note and some silver to run the message over to Mq. Chabenteau. He thinks it is a good idea to let the Mq. know Father Piedmont will be on this upcoming expedition into the local wood, known around here as the Tanglewood.  Varidell is a suspicious sort so decides to shadow the urchin and make sure the boy does as he is told. 

Toth and Lumin want to visit the local Drune Fortune Teller. She promised a free reading, she sensed the hand of the fates laying upon them. The Blue Moon Curio Shoppe is easily found and the gypsy-like crone sees them to her reading room. Toth lingers in the front room, listening to the reading while the crone pours over Lumin's outstretched hand.

But it is a ruse! Black treachery! The Drune grabs hold of Lumin's arm and holds it fast while an assassin springs out from behind the beaded curtains which concealed the room beyond. Garrote in hand the assassin quickly begins to choke out the cleric. Toth is set upon as well. Another assassin comes out from the kitchen baring a the would-be assailant is clueless on Toth's terrible martial reputation. Jyfrith, the Hammer of Justice, flicks out instantly and swings like lightning in Toth's hands. The assailant is crushed like a beetle, gout of blood pouring forth from open mouth and crushed sternum. 

Lumin continues to struggle with both the Drune crone and the cutthroat. He grabs for his Blood Knife, but not until Toth delivers a roundhouse with his hammer to the Drune's face can Lumin find the leverage to bury his eldritch knife deep into the unknown thug's eye. Before they both could say, "What the hell was that about?" Varidell's whistle can be heard outside. This is usually a sign the group's lead slinker was in dire straights.

The two holy warriors race out into the rapidly darkening evening and close in on the sound. They find Varidell rolling in the dust of an alley, three werewolves closing in for the kill. Blood pours from his savaged shoulder. Magical and silver weapons in hand, one werewolf is slain and the other two driven off.

My memory is fuzzy on this, but somehow the PCs became aware of Jankula Ansulex living in Le Frenaie. This stranger is responsible for at least Cree and Varidell finding themselves in Averoigne through unknown magics. The odd scholar provides Varidell with a potion "Guaranteed to cure the disease of lycanthropy."

Tea is brewed and the group shares secrets and information with Jankula. He is convinced gates from other worlds have been opened into Averoigne and alien beings mean to pass through and conquer all! "The ruined palace must be the source of the dimensional portals. You must return there. You must close these magical gates or the world as we know it will be destroyed," insists Jankula. 

"Leave the Negamancer's globe with me," he requests. "Perhaps I may be able to make it serve our ends. I will return it to you in the morning before you all depart."

Random City Folk for your Fantasy Streets

I found this half completed list for a random generator. I think it is cobbled together from disparate lists I found on other gamer's blogs. The purpose is to give me a quick NPC when the Player Characters decide they want to hit up a local for some information. This should give you enough details to make the encounter a worthwhile one.

Generate me a random city (or town) folk with a light dose of flavor!

Patrick Stuart's Sky-Stone-River Place

Is an obscure PDF, no longer available, containing a very entertaining dungeon filled with opportunities for climbing, swinging and yelling in a vast cavern filled with toppled templery and mosaic birds. 

My Rom'Myr Dying Earth campaign was built around this adventure module as the start location. Firstly, because I think the adventure is hella-cool. I knew I wanted to run it as soon as I skimmed the plain text doc. The other is because my OSR Homebrew setting used the Thief class as the base character class. If you don't qualify for any of the other six classes you are a thief. And with thieves having a high Climb Walls ability, the only  ability they can really exercise with some assurance of success, is a perfect match for the dungeon's interior environment. 

The campaign has moved on from the starting location, obviously, in the last year and a half, but before more daylight appears between that glorious opening and the current campaign's direction I would like to honor this original freebie with my own illustration of the water-warped temple.

Death in Rom'Myr

The last session was a continuation of coming to grips with the denizens of the Pale Knight's Palace. They had indeed returned to the Aticorn with the 8 threads from the vampire lord’s cloak, and the creature of Faerie did release the party from the peculiar geas laid upon them. But they had left the young Violet behind in the nightmarish palace. None of the warriors could look each other in the eye if they left their potential meal-ticket lost and uncashed. So instead of pushing on to the realative safety of Le Freniae, the party turned around and marched back to the ruined structure which just last night held an alien conclave and was racked by terrible explosions. The daylight did little to relieve the gloom saturating the steep, forest hollow. Once inside they wasted little time plowing to the room of dragon eggs and the broken throne room. The 3 eggs which were left behind last night appear now to be gone. The throne room was appropriately barren, but the unbelievable events which overtook the group last in this room left behind signs of the awful reality which had transpired. 

Clues wrapped in a dropped communique hinted at deep conspiracy on now a cosmic scale. But nothing yet seen prepared them for the colossal marble snake coiled in the center of it’s room of rampage. Not a hallucinatory dream after all. Stone it was made and still it breathed and slumbered. Above the beast, as if suspended like an acrobat, the silvery beauty, the alien and powerful Aladonia floated like a billowing cloud over the rubble. Her advisory, the grotesque talking hair-skin thing, was no where in sight. An unoccupied alchemy lab provided insight on the child-snatching which they were bearing witness to. Their bowels turned to water as a closing, suffocating trap threatened a TPK and still no sign of the lovely Violet. Questions dogged their every step; what with the stealing of children? What was the significance of multiple dimensions filled with strange beings? And how was all this going to pay? 

My Rom'Myr Campaign

is my online game and I have been enjoying the taping and recording of these sessions. But with the crash of G+ and YouTube I cannot seem to get a reliable audio (or video) recording of these sessions. These recording issues have forced my hand once again to write in review of the games held in Rom’Myr Dying Earth Campaign. This current blog post is a quick summation of Sunday’s game...

The party is of 5, not all from the same world. Traveling the Averoigne wilderness they encounter the mule-thing Farthingnay. This enchanted beast of fairei compels the PCs to collect 8 threads from the Pale Knight’s cloak.

The party finds and penetrates the Pale Knight’s ruined palace. It is a crumbling pile haunted by dark obscenities. Feasting on the dead appears the main form of sustenance for the palace’s denziens. In the lower level dining room the party crosses blades and hammers with the Order of the Maggot, a martial order of ghouls. They claimed to be the personal guard and escort of his grace the Lord Bishop of the Pale. It appears the Pale Knight is holding audience!

An artifact of ancient evil was uncovered, a black cauldron. Toth, with his mighty hammer Jyfryth, sunder the cauldron in twain. The two thieves of Valla’Tair lead the way into darkness. It is not long before the palace responds to the party’s intrusion. Red and Silver Dragon soldiers, terror gnomes of in-between, clash with the PCs in a large chamber deep in the dungeon. Knives and axes snicker-snap in orange torchlight. The fight is sharp and swift. 8 of these creatures lay dead on the floor, for no race of man were these terror gnomes, while the party suffered wounds to the paladin Toth and Lumin of the Hidden Hand. The terror gnomes wielded short side swords in battle and capable of wicked wounds. It took much faith and bandages to restore their health. Vari’dell and Cree, the thieves of Valla’Tair, are only covered in gore from the soldier they slew. La Batard was equally unscathed.

The palace had more to throw at the brave party, the palace walls itself! Mere doors turned into mystic portals, dividing the party and leavining others truly lost. Cree, a monster-hunter by trade, is left stranded in an unknown cavern, vast and dank. He must move swift and silent, he must brave the terrors of the living dead and eventually return to the radius of the party’s torch. Erstwhile, the two warriors of faith, Lumin and Toth, scout and thief, all of them slay the petty-lych Skeelos, and restore Aladona to life.

How will the temporary alliance with the lady called Aladona and the PCs last? What awaits them in the throne room? Only the next game session can reveal!

OSR adventure AA03 early edition is now available!

Purging Woth Nrld Oekwyn's Muddy Hole, Vanishing Tower Press' first OSR-compatible adventure module is available for purchase as a PDF.

It is a tight little work and is available in PDF form for $3.99. 

[10/13/19] Final edits complete, the PDF is clean with little or no typos now!

The set-up: 

A gasping faithful of the Grim Gauntlet, gripping bloodied mace in gashed hands, lies

wounded in the forest. They have just crawled out from their failed mission within the “Hole”. A trio of fanged-mouthed humanoids killed their party before they escaped with their life. Robid has sworn to destroy this forgotten shrine of evil. Will the PCs help?

The POD version and the PDF with internal links is most likely two weeks out. I could have the book go through another round of layout. I may for the POD version.

But for those who want to put this adventure into play now use PayPal to send payment. I'm at jay@vanishingtowerpress.com!


It is 40 pages, includes original art from myself and others, has had editing work done to it, an Appendix and a full monster "manual" of all creatures used. 

Keyed dungeon map and a "dungeon ecology" breakdown to help the DM run the dangers fully.

Feedback is encouraged. The PDF is also on DriveThruRPG if you can't wait for me to get home and email your copy, but I do take the hit on OBS's commission. 

That is about it. Perfect Bound, I don't think I can do saddle-stitched. If it is an option I will make it saddle-stitched.