#pdf round two

[raventroll80]

I need to draw more g/t, once MerMay’s over I’m gonna give myself until November or maybe December before I go back to working on the project so I can draw other things (g/t included) without feeling like I’m not spending my time correctly.

[queer-ragnelle]

Beginner’s Guide to Medieval Arthuriana

Just starting out at a loss for where to begin?

Here’s a guide for introductory Medieval texts and informational resources ordered from most newbie friendly to complex. Guidebooks and encyclopedias are listed last.

All PDFs link to my Google drive and can be found on my blog. This post will be updated as needed.

Pre-Existing Resources

Hi-Lo Arthuriana

♡ Loathly Lady Master Post ♡

Medieval Literature by Language

Retellings by Date

Films by Date

TV Shows by Date

Documentaries by Date

Arthurian Preservation Project

The Camelot Project

If this guide was helpful for you, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi!

Medieval Literature

Page (No Knowledge Required)

The Vulgate Cycle | Navigation Guide | Vulgate Reader

Culhwch and Olwen

The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle

The Marriage of Sir Gawain

Sir Gawain and The Green Knight

The Welsh Triads

Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory

Squire (Base Knowledge Recommended)

The Mabinogion

Four Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes

King Artus | scan by @jewishlancelot

Morien

Knight (Extensive Knowledge Recommended)

The History of The King's of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth

Alliterative Morte

Here Be Dragons (Weird or Arthurian Adjacent)

The Crop-Eared Dog

Perceforest | A Perceforest Reader | PDF courtesy of @sickfreaksirkay

Wigalois | Vidvilt

Guingamor, Lanval, Tyolet, & Bisclarevet by Marie of France

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Grail Quest

Peredur (The Mabinogion)

The Story of the Grail + 4 Continuations by Chrétien de Troyes

Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach

The Crown by Heinrich von dem Türlin (Diu Crône)

The High Book of The Grail (Perlesvaus)

The History of The Holy Grail (Vulgate)

The Quest for The Holy Grail Part I (Post-Vulgate)

The Quest for The Holy Grail Part II (Post-Vulgate)

Merlin and The Grail by Robert de Boron

The Legend of The Grail | PDF courtesy of @sickfreaksirkay

Lancelot Texts

Knight of The Cart by Chretien de Troyes

Lanzelet by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven

Spanish Lancelot Ballads

Gawain Texts

Sir Gawain and The Green Knight

The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle

The Marriage of Sir Gawain

Sir Gawain and The Lady of Lys

The Knight of The Two Swords

The Turk and Sir Gawain

Perilous Graveyard | scan by @jewishlancelot

Tristan/Isolde Texts

Béroul & Les Folies

Prose Tristan (The Camelot Project)

Tristan and The Round Table (La Tavola Ritonda) | Italian Name Guide

The Romance of Tristan

Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg

Byelorussian Tristan

Educational/Informational Resources

Encyclopedias & Handbooks

Warriors of Arthur by John Matthews, Bob Stewart, & Richard Hook

The Arthurian Companion by Phyllis Ann Karr

The New Arthurian Encyclopedia by Norris J. Lacy

The Arthurian Handbook by Norris J. Lacy & Geoffrey Ashe

The Arthurian Name Dictionary by Christopher W. Bruce

Essays & Guides

A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes edited by Joan Tasker & Norris J. Lacy

A Companion to Malory edited by Elizabeth Archibald

A Companion to The Lancelot-Grail Cycle edited by Carol Dover

Arthur in Welsh Medieval Literature by O. J. Padel

Diu Crône and The Medieval Arthurian Cycle by Neil Thomas

Wirnt von Gravenberg's Wigalois: Intertextuality & Interpretation by Neil Thomas

The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac by Jessie Weston

The Legend of Sir Gawain by Jessie Weston

[terresdebrume]

There's a not insignificant chance I'll get to open a DND club at my school so I made these quick charts to help. They're made to be printed in A5 format, and if anyone is interested I can try and put a link to the PDF version on drive.

First image covers the type and names of dice. Image 2 explains ability scores, img 3 explains what modifiers, HP, AC, Proficiency, DC saving throw & death save mean.

Image 4 & 5 are also lists of words but they have a big red logo with white axes in it. Img 4 explains flanking, advantage, disadvantage, melee range, critical hit/fail, area of effect and ranged spell attack. Img 5 explains the elements of combat: Initiative, what a Round is, movement, action, bonus action, reaction, attack of opportunity.

My next step is to make one of these per class to help players remember their main level 1 features and main rolls, but that's probably going to have to wait until later.

This effort was inspired by GinnyDi's video about how to help new players like the game on YouTube. Please reblog if this seems useful to you!

ETA: There are now two more booklets in this collection: The Little Book of Level 1 has all the essential mechanics of each class, and Conditions, conditions, conditions! Sums up all possible conditions in the game. You can find them through the pinned post on my blog :)

[dungeon-strugglers]

✨New item!✨ Black Star  Armor (shield), legendary (requires attunement) 

This dark iron round shield is ringed with retractable blades. While this shield is on your person, you have resistance to radiant damage. Additionally, you have advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects that originate from a celestial.

As a bonus action while wielding the shield you can cause the blades to extend or retract into the shield. While the blades are extended, the shield functions as a martial melee weapon that deals 1d8 slashing damage + your Strength modifier. If you are proficient with shields, you can add your proficiency bonus to attack rolls made with this shield. While the blades are extended, you can use the shield for two-weapon fighting, even if you are wielding another one-handed melee weapon that is not light. The shield can be thrown with a normal range of 30 feet and a long range of 90 feet. Immediately after the attack, the shield flies back to your hand. 

If you start your turn within 500 feet of a hostile celestial and the blades are extended, they begin to spin rapidly. While the blades are spinning, the shield deals an additional 2d8 slashing damage to any target it hits. 

If a hostile celestial of CR 10 or greater that you can see dies within 60 feet of you, you can absorb its soul into the shield as a reaction. For each soul absorbed, you gain 2d10 temporary hit points, and a permanent +1 bonus to AC while holding the shield, to a maximum of +3. The souls are released and the bonus is lost if your attunement to the shield ends.

Forged by the hunters of celestials to aid in their endless war. - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for almost 200 magic items (wow!), printable item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks, and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️ Thank you so much for your support! 💖

📜 Credit. Art and design by us: the Dungeon Strugglers. Please credit us if you repost elsewhere.

[gothhabiba]

A few months ago, an article by Just Like Us about a survey of young UK adults regarding LGBT topics (and other articles on The Pink News and Gay Times UK that reported on that article) did the rounds on here.

The headline of the Gay Times article, written by Amy Ashenden (a cisgender butch lesbian and the interim CEO of Just Like Us, who hired the consultancy that conducted the survey) was "Lesbians being anti-trans is a lesbophobic trope"; of the results of the survey, she writes "I’m so glad that we finally have the research to demonstrate what most lesbians already knew: this narrative is completely false."

A lot of this initial reporting focused on the claims that "most anti-trans adults don’t know a trans person in real life" and "lesbians are the most supportive of trans people of any identity group, and it's a lesbophobic trope that they are anti-trans." These articles were written before the full report of the survey's data had been released.

The full report that these claims are based on is now out, for anyone who wants to take a closer look at the results for themselves. The pdf appears to be OCR readable but not image-described. The survey deals with many topics including being "out" and "feeling supported" at school and at work, but I'll just try to break down the evidence for the above-mentioned two claims.

How respondents were selected:

Just Like Us's report says that "Participants were drawn in partnership between Just Like Us and from Cibyl’s independent database of UK students and young adults" (p. 69). Cibyl offers "bespoke studies and focus groups," and says that "Using our Cibyl-ings student panel, we can source specific students to look at themes and topics important to you and ask the unique questions you want the answers to." This is rather vague.

Sample group and size:

3,695 young adults aged between 18 and 25. 86% cisgender and 12% transgender; 47% LGBT and 53% non-LGBT (used as a control group to compare LGBT responses to); 72% white; 79% students; 54% "female" (self-declared), 36% "male", 8% non-binary (pp. 69-70).

Support for the articles' central claims:

There is no full breakdown of the data resulting from the survey that would allow anyone else to do their own statistical analysis. Here's (what Just Like Us gives of) the data that the "most anti-trans people don't know a trans person in real life" claim is based on:

[ID: Headline reading "Attitudes towards transgender people. Question reading "How supportive are you of transgender people? Of people who "know a transgender person," 64% said "very supportive"; "supportive" 23%; "slightly supportive" 10%; "not supportive" 3%. Of those who "don't know a transgender person," 33% said "very supportive"; "supportive" 28%; "slightly supportive" 20%; "not supportive" 18%. Second question "Do you know any transgender people?" Result: 28% "Yes, someone I'm close to"; 38% "Yes, someone I'm not close to"; 34% "I don't know any transgender people." Further breakdown of the question "Do you know a transgender person?": 49% of "non-LGBT+" people said "yes"; 84% of LGBT+ people; 94% of non-binary people; 93% of transgender people; 82% of asexual people; 85% of bi/pan people; 80% of gay men; 92% of lesbians; 75% of questioning people. End ID]

The "do you know any transgender people" question is worded slightly differently each time—plus, the Just Like Us article and the report (p. 8) adduce the phrase "in real life" to "know a trans person," but this page doesn't—so I don't think we're getting the exact wording for that question that the survey respondents saw. The data for "how supportive are you of transgender people" isn't broken down according to whether the respondent said they were "close" or "not close" to the transgender person or people they knew; it also doesn't seem to be broken down into trans or nonbinary versus cisgender respondents.

"How supportive are you of transgender people?" was the only question dealing with this issue, and the responses "very supportive," "supportive," "slightly supportive," and "not supportive" were the only options available; there's nothing breaking down what "support" means in terms of policy (e.g. support versus non-support for consent-based clinics, national funding for transition care, non-discrimination laws, bathroom laws, &c. &c.). There is also no distinction made between "support" for trans women and trans men.

The claim "UK adults between the ages of 18 and 25 who answer 'not supportive' to the question 'How supportive are you of transgender people?' are several times more likely to also answer 'no' to the question 'do you know a transgender person' (or maybe 'do you know a transgender person in real life')" is supported, in my opinion. The sample size is large enough for that 3% to not be random noise.

The analysis in the Just Like Us article groups together "very supportive" and "supportive" when providing percentages of respondents of given identities who support trans people:

Of all LGBT+ identities, other than trans and non-binary people themselves, lesbian young adults were most likely to say they know a trans person (92%), and most likely to say they are “supportive” or “very supportive” of trans people (96%). In comparison, 89% of LGBT+ people overall said they were  “supportive” or “very supportive” of trans people, and just 69% of non-LGBT+ people said the same.

There is no full breakdown of how many people are "very supportive," "supportive," "slightly supportive" or "not supportive" of trans people by identity label. The relevant data is on p. 63 of the report:

"Looking at who was the most supportive of transgender people:

non-binary respondents were 97% supportive or very supportive with 1% of respondents indicating they were not supportive;

lesbian respondents were 95% supportive or very supportive [everywhere else in the report and in the reporting says 96%, so perhaps this is a typo] (3% were not supportive);

bi/pansexual respondents were 92% supportive or very supportive (2% were not supportive).

Of respondents who were gay men, 82% were supportive or very supportive of transgender people, with 7% indicating they were not supportive.

Among non-LGBT+ respondents 69% were supportive of transgender people, with 12% indicating they were not supportive."

It's not clear to me how they dealt with e.g. lesbians who were also transgender. Pages 69-70 of the report go into the questions that people were asked to identify their identity label for the purposes of statistical analysis ("Is your gender identity the same as the one you were originally assigned at birth?"; and "What is your sexual orientation?"). The fact that these are separate questions (as they should be) tells me that there's overlap between groups throughout the study; any data that says e.g. "83% of lesbian respondents" is combining cis and trans lesbians, and any result that says "67% of trans people" is combining heterosexual and LGB trans people.

So, while narrowing the respondents down to just cisgender LGB people to compare their support for trans people would have been one way to analyse the data, I'm guessing they didn't do that (plus, there's the article's wording of "LGBT+ people overall"; it wouldn't make statistics-analytical sense to compare cis lesbians with all LGBT+ people, plus it would presumably make the higher support % of lesbians less stark, which seems like the opposite of what Ashenden wanted to do).

When the article says "other than trans and non-binary people themselves," they don't mean that they excluded trans and non-binary people from the percentages given; they mean "other than the number you get if you measure support for transgender people just from trans and non-binary people." We're not given the number that would result from doing this. The number we're given in the report for non-binary people is 97% supportive (this number is not included in the article); we are not given a number for just trans people, but we can probably assume it also approaches 100%.

This means that the 96% support presumably measures support from cis and trans lesbians; the 82% of "supportive" and "very supportive" gay men includes cis and trans men; &c.

There is a major statistics-analytical problem with acknowledging that trans and non-binary respondents have the highest rates of support for trans people, but then not controlling the results of this question for whether the respondent was cis or trans. If a higher percentage of lesbian respondents were trans than the percentage of gay men respondents that were trans, this would itself skew the numbers for lesbian support higher. There's no reason to suppose that this did happen, but there is not enough information given about the data that Just Like Us collected to rule it out. Again, at no point are we given information about overlap between LGB and trans groups or a breakdown of what that overlap looked like (how many trans respondents were heterosexual versus LGB, &c.).

As I mentioned above, some of the survey focused on whether respondents "felt supported" at home and at school. Some snippets on the results of these questions can be found on pages 45-49 of the report. "[M]ore than 1 in 4" LGBT+ respondents "felt unsupported" in school compared to "1 in 10" non-LGBT+ respondents; 37% of transgender respondents and 39% of nonbinary respondents said they felt unsupported in school. Despite the survey's focus on the outcomes of felt support, and despite all respondents being asked if they were "supportive" of transgender people, no question asked transgender respondents if they "felt supported" by cisgender LGB people.

Generalisability of claims:

The sampling of the data (which is drawn entirely from people in the UK aged 18-25, mostly students) also means that the claims are not generalisable to the entire UK population; you can't say the "majority of anti-trans adults don’t know a trans person in real life" (the headline of the Just Like Us article) or "Most anti-trans adults don’t actually know a trans person in real life" (the headline of the Pink News article), since the survey did not take a representative sample of all adults. You can't say "lesbians are not anti-trans" (the url of the Gay Times article), since the survey is not representative of all lesbians.

Funding sources:

The report was sponsored by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a firm offering professional services (accounting, auditing, consulting, financial advisory, litigation consulting, and other services offered to businesses).

Cibyl, an independent research firm in the UK, "led on research design and delivery, then worked in partnership with Just Like Us to produce the report." They include the report ("Positive Futures") as an example of their work on their website. Their summary of the study focuses on the claim that "support in LGBT+ young adults’ teenage years" is necessary to the future development of their careers, and on what "employers and careers professionals can do to help LGBT+ young people feel safe and supported." This is the same kind of thing that Deloitte talks about when it comes to LGBT+ issues (namely, inclusion versus exclusion and support versus non-support in the workplace).

A video that Asheden produced with Mags Scott (partner at Deloitte) also focuses on how "support" for LGBT+ people "at home, in school, and in the workplace" leads to confidence in "career prospects" and ability to be onself "at work," and is necessary for LGBT+ people's mental wellbeing.

Just Like Us has an interest in promoting research that suggests that support for LGBT+ people in school will benefit them in their careers, since they sell training resources on forming LGBT+ groups, and talks with LGBT+ speakers, to schools. Just Like Us is a non-profit organisation.

Declaration of conflicts of interest and peer review:

This is an industry-sponsored study and not an academic one. There is no declaration of conflicts of interest required, and the study was not peer-reviewed.

Tl;dr:

Some breakdown of data was revealed in the report. The exact questions that respondents saw were not given. The data is not given with enough granularity to allow for anyone else to conduct statistical analysis based on it.

There is not enough evidence to say whether the study supports the claim that (cis?) lesbians are more supportive of trans people than any other identity group, since the survey was not clear what "support" means (someone may claim to support trans people as individuals while not supporting transition care, for example, due to some kind of "love the sinner, hate the sin" logic).

There is also a statistical problem with the support for this claim, since overlap between "transgender" and "cisgender" respondents is not controlled for. There is not enough data given in the report to allow anyone else to control for this factor. The results would hold if we assumed that similar percentages of e.g. lesbian, bisexual, and gay male respondents were transgender.

The results apply only to people in the UK aged 18-25 and cannot be generalised to all adults in the UK.

Summaries of this report given by the firms that funded and conducted it centre on the idea that "support" of LGBT+ people at home, at school, and in the workplace is necessary to allow them to thrive in the workplace. Just Like Us, who put out the report, sell LGBT+ talks and training to schools.

[dokushoclub]

The middle of September is the time for the Japanese tradition of moon viewing. It's said that the September moon is especially pretty and round in Japan and of course there are some delicious related foods for the occasion as well.

I've gathered some articles and blog posts about 月見（つきみ）that were written for learners of Japanese in simple language. Most of these stories have a reading level fitting for JLPT N5 and N4 readers. If you are interested in learning about the traditions in Japanese, have a look - all texts are freely available online!

The Japan Foundation Kansai

This text is 8 pages long, graded as A2 and is available as a direct PDF download through the link below.

https://www.jpf.go.jp/j/kansai/clip/images/page/yomyom/002_tsukimi.pdf

Hirogaru Nihongo

Hirogaru Nihongo's article is only a few sentences short, but they also include a video on Tsukimidango and there's a reading comprehension quiz at the end.

https://hirogaru-nihongo.jp/hoshi/article/tsukimi/

Meika Sensei's Blog

Meika Sensei's blog for beginner readers has short, simple sentences that each add a bit more information. There is also a version for intermediate readers.

https://meikasensei.com/beginners/night-of-the-full-moon-and-moon-viewing-2/

Nihongoschool Nihongoblog

The blog post by Kazue Ono has two parts, one aimed at beginners and one for intermediate readers. It's a good practice to start with the beginner text and then try and read the more difficult one as well.

https://www.nihongoschool.co.uk/post/%E3%81%8A%E6%9C%88%E8%A6%8B%EF%BC%88%E3%81%A4%E3%81%8D%E3%81%BF%EF%BC%89-the-moon-viewing

Matcha Magazine

Honorable mention for Matcha Magazine: Their article isn't only for Tsukimi, but all Japanese traditions and celebrations taking place from September to November. Their articles include some translations in the main text to help with following along.

https://matcha-jp.com/easy/1348

[acheronist]

to the ghost of henry peglar, congrats on writing your poem down 177 years ago!!!

to the actual academic scholars who have studied the pages before me....

so I took the royal museum greenwich's scan of the poem page (which is available online hereeee) and screwed around with its light levels in photoshop until henry's script was darkened enough to see more clearly. then I digitally traced over the darkened letters as best as I could, while also trying to discern his handwriting, and type up how I was reading it & this process took me about a week to get done between like... living my regular day to day life lmao.......

so when it WAS done, the final isabel acheronist peglar papers ["the open C"] transcript seemed a bit different than how I remembered the readily available russell potter transcript going ? (the poem is on the last two pages of that pdf for those of you who don't spend a billion hours a week looking at it btw)

it felt like I was getting more/different information out of it, compared to the potter transcript, which was kind of stressing me out honestly. so THEN I compared mine with barry cornwall's original poem and found more words that matched up? particularly in the second and third stanzas?

so!!!!! almost two hundred years later here's what I've landed on:

April 21 1847 the C the C the open ) ( it grew so fresh the Ever free the Ever free the Ever free without it without it covered it will Run to Earth above Re gions Round I love the C I love the C when I whare & I wish to be with and and silence whare Never go if a sailor should a Come and Make the meek What matter what matter Come Ride Or Sleep there was shores white and of red morn at the noisy hours knew I was ever near I was Born the [...] in felt Unto the Maid the wale the young dolphin ...... yet thes back of gold the Call of gods When I was on Old England Shore I like the young C more and more oftentimes time flew to a sweltering place like a bird thats seeks it mother Case and ware she was bird oft to me for have I loved a young and Hopen C

so then after going thru All Of That, I wanted to have a version of the original poem with parts that Henry did remember clearly highlighted for comparison purposes:

I know it's a popular theory that Henry was writing a dirty parody of the original poem? which if true, is funny as hell. me when i have to write cheeky victorian porn before i die.

But (serious voice) something about that hadn't ever seemed exactly right to me... IN MY HEART it seems more realistic that around 1847 he (and also by extension, the whole surviving expedition crew) were starting to experience confusion / brain fog symptoms from being ummmm quite physically unwell. the lead poisoning/scurvy combo would have severe effects on the brain's ability to function properly, and I started to wonder if Henry was trying to test his memory somehow? So he picked a widely known and popular Victorian era poem about being a sailor to see how much he could recall??? and he then got a little whimsical with it, and wrote in his own words to fill in the portions he couldn't fully recall, because it's his own diary and likely didn't expect anyone else to ever read it, much less have it turn into ONE of TWO surviving sources about the expedition?????

like... idk... this is probably the work of someone in the exact moment as they were starting to realize how bad things were, and then was trying to cope by using poetry. and That hurts my feelings enough as it is, but going through it was also just a very weird and haunting experience....... like, I can recognize all these tiny details in this dead guy's script and handwriting now. and to read his own account of his life in his own words, what stood out to him and what he recalled, what he wanted people in the future to know about him? insane. it literally felt like i was getting haunted by him for no reason. on top of knowing that Someone (#teamarmitage) loved this guy enough to keep his memory protected and safe, even though They Were So Totally Fucked And Going To Die There, unknowing if they'd ever be found again........

SIGHING + SIGHING + SIGHING + SIGHING + CRYING A BIT HONESTLY

anyways thanks for reading this all. I don't think that this is revolutionary franklin expedition news by any means, and idk if there's a better different transcript somewhere that i've not found that already covers all this? but it's consumed a lot of my life lately lol and i wanted to share. because its the anniversary of henry writing it, and it felt...... important....? 💌....????

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy July 11th Update, Wolfmania, Our Biggest Update Yet!

This update was delayed by about one week, but I think everyone will find that this was well worth it, as this has been our most significant update ever to the rulebook and general content of Eureka. Where do I even begin?

Maybe I’ll start with the best part. For a limited time, this update is FREE! You can grab a PDF from the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club Discord server from now (July 11th 2024) until the next book club round starts! (Which will probably be about a month.)

Here’s just a few of the highlights for this update, you’ll find the full changelog below.

Major cleanup and copy-editing is underway again finally, and we managed to eliminate 42 pages of unnecessary blank space and extraneous text, as well as rewording and reorganizing many rules sections to make them clearer and easier to read. You now only have to read 20 pages before the first mention of how to roll dice, rather than 70.

Ten new character traits.

A PC’s Wealth stat now has a much greater effect on them in more areas of gameplay.

A ton of new art assets.

A bunch of massive improvements to combat that make it flow smoother with fewer interruptions, some of these improvements will be discussed in detail in their own post.

Repurposed Chapter 7 into being a chapter dedicated to GMing and homebrew.

Huge cleanups to the supernatural chapter.

Some changes to monsters overall to make them more modular and less restrictive in character creation.

Two new playable “supernatural” “creatures.”

Two new mage traits as well. (Which also double as two new spells for the witch)

The weaknesses of a vampire are now a bit more subjective and modular. For instance, in character creation you can trade off a greater sensitivity to garlic for a more potent sense of smell, or a lesser sensitivity to garlic for a weaker sense of smell. Vampires are now also explicitly thematically tied to religion, religious trauma, and religious horror.

Wolfmania! The wolfman monster now has different transformation options during character creation. You now choose your wolfman PC’s partial wolf transformation and full wolf transformation, with four options for each. There are some major narrative trade-offs for different combinations but I’ll let you figure that out for yourself.

Then, there is "The Eye of Neptune." "The Eye of Neptune" is a Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy adventure module that has languished in an unfinished state for like six months, but we finally got it like 99% complete. The only thing missing are the maps and the artwork, which it is fully playable without.

Man has built a city of steel and black blood atop the endless abyss. It is a beating heart bound together with labyrinthian pipe veins. Hundreds of miles away from civilization, it stands in the midst of the Gulf of Mexico with naught but empty horizons around it. Within is a vast structure of winding halls, grinding machinery, and thousands upon thousands of small parts working to achieve a grand design. It is the Offshore Oil Rig Neptune, and it was once run by 200 workers. Now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has fallen to more or less a dozen. These last vestiges of life in the rig spread themselves thin and work their hands to the bone to keep the massive beast running. In the midst of this overwhelming isolation, two members of the already shorthanded crew are unaccounted for, Seth Barlowe and Lukas Ward. The installation manager, Noah, has convened a meeting to try to find out what happened to him. With the crew already severely shorthanded and tensions running high, a mysterious disappearance is the last thing anyone needs. 

You can get a copy of The Eye of Neptune, as well as another adventure module, several stories, and continuous monthly rulebook updates from our Patreon for only $5/month!

Now here's the full changelog! I'm mercifully putting it under a Read More because it's our longest one yet!

CHANGE LOG 

Copy-editing Progress: Thoroughly copy-edited up to p. 47.

CHAPTER 1

Better clarified how Heat increases.

Minor edit to Role of the Narrator.

Changed the name of Chapter 1 to “Core Gameplay Rules”

Minor tweak/clarification to what happens with a 7-9 on a Heat roll.

Instead of +1 Heat when the villain is in league with the police, Heat now simply does not decrease for the duration of the adventure. 

Heat rolls are now made whenever an investigator’s Heat increases by 3 or more within a single scene, rather than being made on multiples of 3 Heat.

Added another entry to the list of how Heat can increase

How much Heat an investigator starts the adventure with is now based on their Wealth stat.

Minor sentence reworks

Added a more detailed story of A.N.I.M. and Eureka’s history to the foreword

Moved Verisimilitude section out of Foreword down below Inspirations 

Moved “Deadly Combat, Permanent Consequences” to Chapter 3 above Grievous Wounds

Moved the “Monsters” section of the foreword to Chapter 8

Better clarified starting Heat

Lots of copy-editing and minor twinning, additions, and tweaks

Fixed the Quick Term definition for Truth being inaccurate.

Moved a bunch of sections from Chapter 1 to Chapter 7, including Heat

CHAPTER 2

Fixed the Believer Snoop accidentally being put with the Woo-Woo trait

Tweaked the None of My Business Trait

Changed Traits section to “Mundane Trait List”

Changed the amount of Penetrative HP for Not Finished Yet trait to 13 instead of 10

Added holster to item list.

Found out bump stocks are no-longer illegal 

Added “It’s for a Book” trait 

Added “Moneybags” trait

Added “The Ascot” trait 

Added “Gang Way!” trait 

Added “Dangerprone Damsel” trait

Added “Master of Disguise” Trait.

Added “Ninja” Trait

Added “Quick Draw” trait

Edited the Food Budget item to be more clear

Changed it so that guns no-longer come with bullets, these must be bought separately

Changed having +2 Wealth to “middle class” and +3 Wealth to “upper middle class,” to better describe how the Wealth skill actually influences the game

The formula for calculating WP is now 3D6+6+[Wealthx2]

Increased the WP price for certain items to reflect the above change

Added “Frugal” trait 

Added “Kleptomaniac” trait

Added art of example investigator Nick Morgan

Moved a bunch of sections from Chapter 2 to Chapter 7

Moved some stuff about investigators losing items to Chapter 7

Moved some stuff about homebrewing traits into Chapter 7

Changed the name of Chapter 2 to “How to Make an Investigator” because now all the NPC stuff is moved to Chapter 7

Better clarified skills

Changed the heading “Additional Traits” to “Choosing More Than Three Traits”

CHAPTER 3

Added clarification that sometimes it does matter whether a weapon is a blunt weapon, a piercing weapon, or a cutting weapon, and we trust players to be able to intuit what types of weapons are what.

Made animal teeth and animal claws separate entries on the weapon list

Better clarified when Speed needs to be calculated and when it doesn't

Explained what a node map is

Removed the rules for doing turn order based on Reflexes rolls, and finally made it so that Epicenter Initiative works with firearms combat.

Added rules for equipping weapons during combat

You now add Acceleration bonus to Athletics rolls for characters moving long distances in theater of the mind combat. Need to go around and remove the special speeds for various supernatural characters. 

Added a section that explains why so many pages is dedicated to combat despite this game being an investigation game primarily

Added art of some small knives

Put “Deadly Combat, Permanent Consequences” to this chapter instead of the Foreword

CHAPTER 4

Added some art to the gun information list 

Made Fully Automatic Fire have a hard limit of 12 bullets per attack. 

Added Quick Cycling rule, allowing characters with a +2 or more in Firearms to fire Two-round Bursts with Single-Action and Repeating firearms.

CHAPTER 5

Added rule for ride-by attacks to basic melee attack

Better clarified Escape

Attempts to disarm a character now have bonuses or penalties based on the difference between the Athletics skill of the two characters involved, similar to how Escape attempts work. 

CHAPTER 6

Clarified that Acceleration is not affected by Composure

Tiny tweak to how chases are described

Better clarified when Speed needs to be calculated and when it doesn't

CHAPTER 7

Added “How We Play Eureka” section explaining which optional rules we personally do and don't prefer

Changed the name of Chapter 7 to “Advanced Narration and Homebrewing”

Added a ton of stuff from other chapters to Chapter 7 to make it a general chapter for Narrators as well as help with game/module design and homebrewing. It is currently a little bit of a mess but is at least serviceable until we get to the point where we can fully copy-edit it.

CHAPTER 8

Minor vampire tweaks

Made it so that that the vampire sensitivity to certain scents is more codified and now causes composure rolls, and now works more like their compulsion to count things in that the placement of the weakness on their tiers of fear determines how much of a bonus they have to Senses checks involving smell and taste. 

Adjusted Even Monsters are Afraid of Something section to reflect the above changes 

Added more mechanics for how NPC vampires interact mechanically with weaknesses. 

Better clarified the full moon roll for wolfmen. It is now just 1D12+1. 

Better codified superhuman strength as a rule.

Gave the math for handling consistent HP across alternate supernatural forms its own section.

Completely redid the wolfman wolf forms. Now during character creation players can choose one of four options for each of the wolfman’s wolf forms, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Up to 16 possible combinations! Wolfmania!

Improved the werewolf trait to fit with the updates to wolfman

Adjusted wolf manifestation of vampire to fit with new wolfman rules. 

Better clarified vampire claws

Added Supernatural Bonuses and Investigation Rolls section

Tweaked wolfman involuntary transformation so that the form they rampage in is still random even if they are already in a wolf form when the rampage starts

Changed stats of vampire’s bat manifestation

Better clarified vampire sunlight and silver weakness mechanics

Totally revamped vampire’s monstrous beast manifestation 

Redid the Superhuman Speed mage trait, made it a lot better 

Improved the Stealth bonus of the Invisibility mage trait

Improved Stealth bonuses of thing from beyond.

Added a “Purpose” mechanic to living dolls, which is what the doll in question was built to do. When they act towards this purpose, they get +1 to rolls, and when they fail or otherwise ignore their purpose, they may lose Composure. 

Updated Even Monsters are Afraid of Something section to reflect the above

Made it so wolfmen lose 2 Composure from skipping a meal instead of 1.

Clarified that the thing from beyond does not need to stay in human shape the entire time they are digesting a human victim. 

Clarified the possibility of escaping from a monstrous supernatural beast’s stomach for both the giant wolfman forms and the monstrous vampire manifestation. 

Clarified Telekinesis trait

Added “Manifest Weaponry” Mage Trait

Added “Incredible Strength” Mage Trait

Added ability for an investigator to be a talking dog.

Changed “wannabe monster hunter” to just “monster hunter” and added a new sidebar

Rewriting large chunks of the first half of chapter 8, redefining each type of supernatural investigator, and adding a fourth category of investigator. Work in progress

Monster investigators now only require 18 investigation points instead of 21. 

Removed “Is this a monster or a mage” section. This is no-longer needed now that these categories are more clearly defined. 

Removed blood sacrifice from the witch’s true nature and just committed to making it be about cannibalism and about using magic–any of their magic–for petty and/or entirely selfish reasons. 

Gave witches a proper weakness

Changed the name of the witch to Fairytale Witch

Moved Alternative Witch into the misc. category

Removed large chunks of chapter 8 that were either no-longer needed or had become so outdated as to be contradictory to other rules

Vampires now gain 1 additional point of Composure for every 5 Morale or Composure damage they do to their victim during an attack, to better codify how they feed on human suffering as much as the literal blood they drink.

Added the “Monsters” section of the Foreword to this chapter instead

Changed the name of the Thing From Beyond’s “Shapeshifter” trait to “Imposter Syndrome”

Moved some stuff about homebrewing traits into Chapter 7

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but our Kickstarter page is still the best place to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, and where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more than just status updates, going forward you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and it’s adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[pinbones]

Gummigoo free crochet pattern

FREE pattern at my Ravelry link and under the cut! Pattern includes photo references.

My boy is done! I started making myself a Gummigoo right after seeing episode 2 of The Amazing Digital Circus. While I was making it I realised that you guys might want one too. This doll and this pattern weren't nearly as tough to make as I thought they would be, and I really enjoyed making them.

PDF now edited to remove typo and add another couple of photos.

Pattern and photos under cut!

You need:

(less than) 50g/150m of the following colours of yarn: white, yellow, green, brown

3.5mm hook

Stuffing

Pins

Scissors

Special stitches used:

Picot: chain 3, then slip stitch into the back loop of the first chain.

Bobble: Yarn over. Pull up a loop, yarn over and pull through two, do 4 more times until you have 6 loops on the hook. Yarn over and pull through all six. Pull stitch a little tight.

Triple bobble (regular bobble stitch but twice as tall): Yarn over twice. Pull up a loop, yarn over and pull through two, yarn over and pull through two again, do 4 more times until you have 6 loops on the hook. Yarn over and pull through all six. Pull stitch a little tight.

Double decrease (a decrease over 3 stitches): Pull up a loop through each of 3 stitches, yarn over and pull through all three.

HEAD (white)

1. 6sc into a magic ring [6]

2. 6 inc [12]

3. sc around [12]

4. 2sc, 2 dec, 6sc [10]

5. 2sc, 2inc, 6sc [12]

6-8. sc around (3 rounds) [12]

9. (2sc, inc) x2, 6sc [14]

See special stitches for how to do a bobble stitch -- it's five double crochets to create one stitch.

10. 4sc, bobble stitch, 2sc, bobble stitch, 6sc [14]

11. 4sc, bobble stitch, 2sc, bobble stitch, 6sc [14]

12. 1sc, dec, 6sc, dec, 3sc [12]

13. (2sc, dec) x3 [9]

Stuff.

14. 1sc, dec) x3 [6]

Cut a tail long enough to sew with. Thread the yarn through the front loops of each remaining stitch and pull to cinch the hole shut. Leave the tail out until needed for sewing.

BODY (white)

1. 6sc into a magic ring

2. 6 inc [12]

3. (5sc, inc) x2 [14]

4-5. sc around (2 rounds) [14]

6. (6sc, inc) x2 [16]

7. (7sc, inc) x2 [18]

8-10. sc around (3 rounds) [18]

Stuff as you go. It's hard to stuff long pieces at last minute.

11. (7sc, dec) x2 [16]

12. sc around [16]

13. (6sc, dec) x2 [14]

14. sc around [14]

15. (5sc, dec) x2 [12]

16. sc around [16]

17. (5sc, inc) x2 [14]

18. sc around [14]

19. 1sc, 4dec, 1sc, 4inc [14]

20. 1sc, 4hdc, 9sc [14]

21. 1sc, 4hdc, 9sc [14]

22. 1sc, 2dec, 9sc [12]

23. 4hdc, 8sc [12]

24. 2dec, 8sc [10]

25. Dec, 8sc [9]

Finish stuffing.

26. (1sc, dec) x3 [6]

Cut the yarn, cinch the hole shit and hide the end.

Connect the head to the body at the very back of the bottom of the head. It should face forwards levelly with the torso erect (90°). The head and neck should connect smoothly at the back to the body.

OVERLAY (yellow and green)

Start in yellow.

1. 6sc into a magic ring [6]

2. 2sc, inc, 2sc. Leave last stitch unworked. Picot (chain 3 and slip stitch into the back loop of the first chain) and turn. [6]

3. 6sc. Picot and turn. [6]

4. 4sc, inc. Leave last stitch unworked. Picot and turn. [6]

5. 4sc, inc. Leave last stitch unworked. Picot and turn. [6]

6. 2sc, inc, 1sc, inc. Leave last stitch unworked. Picot and turn. [7]

7. 3sc, inc, 1sc, inc. Leave last stitch unworked. Picot and turn. [8]

8. 3sc, inc, 2sc, inc. Leave last stitch unworked. Chain (not picot!) and turn. [9]

9. 4sc, inc, 2sc, inc. Leave last stitch unworked. Chain and turn. [10]

10. 4sc, inc, 4sc, inc. Chain and turn. [12]

11. 10sc, dec. Chain and turn. [11]

12. 9sc, dec. Chain and turn. [10]

13. 4sc, dec, 4sc. Chain and turn. [9]

14. 9sc. Chain and turn. [9]

15. 9sc. Chain and turn. [9]

The next row will start colour changing to green. Always hide yarn on the wrong side of the work. There will also be a triple bobble (same as a bobble stitch but with triples -- see special stitches).

Bobbles aren't exactly sharp, but neither are gummy spikes tbh.

16. (Right side is facing you, hide yarn at back:) Inc, 3sc, triple bobble stitch, 2sc, change to green, sc, inc. Chain and turn. [11]

Careful not to skip stitches. Bobbles like to squish the stitches at the side of them and this makes them easy to skip while you're crocheting.

17. (Wrong side is facing you, hide yarn at front:) Inc, 5sc, change to yellow, 4sc, inc. Chain and turn. [13]

18. 3sc, change to green, 10sc. Chain and turn. [13]

13sc in green. Chain and turn. [13]

There will be no more yellow stitches. Leave enough yellow tail to stitch the yellow part on and cut the yarn.

19. 6sc, triple bobble, 6sc. Chain and turn. [13]

Again, careful not to skip stitches around bobbles. Count the stitches at the end of the row following a bobble.

20-22. 13sc (3 rows) [13]

23. 6sc, triple bobble, 6sc. Chain and turn. [13]

24-26. 13sc (3 rows) [13]

27. 6sc, triple bobble, 6sc. Chain and turn. [13]

28-30. 13sc (3 rows) [13]

31. Dec, 4sc, triple bobble, 4sc, dec. Chain and turn. [11]

32-34. 11sc (3 rows) [11]

35. Dec, 3sc, triple bobble, 3sc, dec. Chain and turn. [9]

36. Dec, 5sc, dec. Chain and turn. [7]

37. Dec, 3sc, dec. Chain and turn. [5]

38. Dec, 1sc, dec. Chain and turn. [3]

39. Double decrease (decrease over 3 stitches). Chain 1.

Pull enough yarn through the chain to stitch the green parts down and cut the yarn.

Pin the overlay in place. It should go from just over the tip of the snout to the very tip of the tail, and should fit snuggly and symmetrically. Remember to shape the angles -- the snout should face forwards, the tail should face backwards, the torso should be upright.

Pin the teeth individually if you have enough pins. This ensures the spaces between are visible when connected. The teeth may be uneven/asymmetrical on opposite sides of the mouth due to the way the picots stagger, but just make sure they're pinned and sewn okay and they'll look even.

Note the shape -- it'll need to be bent like this when you fit the overlay on or it'll scrunch when bent later.

Sew! You don't have to go into every row, sewing every other stitch of the body should connect it okay with no glaring gaps. Make sure to sew with the correct colour of yarn tail.

Embroider on a couple of white eyes underneath the eyebrow ridges, with small eyebrows in white.

The eyes are embroidered on with an eyebrow each.

ARMS (one yellow, one green)

Start with a magic ring and leave enough of a tail to attach the end. Leave this end hanging outside the arm.

1. 7sc into a magic ring [7]

2-6. sc around (5 rounds) [7]

7. 2sc, dec, 3sc [6]

8-14. sc around (7 rounds) [6]

Stuff.

15. sc, (picot, sc in the next stitch) x4, slip stitch into the last stitch. Cut the yarn and cinch the palm shut, not too tightly. Hide the end inside.

The green arm is sewn on the higher-green shoulder and the yellow arm on the yellower side. Make sure the biggest finger gap is facing inwards to the body, this is like the wrist.

Leave a gap for the neck and match the arms to the shoulders. You'll find that the arms and fingers are a little bit posable.

LEGS (x2 in green)

Start with a magic ring and leave enough of a tail to attach the end. Leave this end hanging outside the leg.

1. 7sc into a magic ring [7]

2-9. sc around (8 rounds) [7]

10. 2sc, dec, 3sc [6]

11-13. sc around (3 rounds) [6]

14. 4inc, 2sc [10]

15. dec, 4sc, 2dec [7]

Stuff.

Cut yarn and cinch hole shut.

The legs should be connected at the hips with the legs pointing straight down and should connect closely at the top of the leg to make the hips look smoothly attached.

The hips are not at the lowest point of the body, they're where the lower curve begins to happen when the torso is straight upright and the tail points backwards.

HAT (brown)

1. 8sc into a magic ring [8]

2. (2sc, 2inc) x2 [12]

3. 3sc, 2inc, 4sc, 2inc, 1sc [16]

4. In the back loops only, 4sc, dec, 6sc, dec, 2sc [14]

5-6. In both loops, 14sc (2 rounds) [14]

7. In the front loops only, (1sc, inc) x7 [21]

8. In both loops, 5sc, hdc, 2dc in 1, 2dc in 1, hdc, 7sc, hdc, 2hdc in 1, hdc, 2sc [24]

Slip stitch and finish off.

The wider part of the brim with the dcs is the front of the hat. Attach the hat by either tying a string under the chin, or by sewing a couple of inner rim stitches to the head to keep it in place.

Sewn in place by two stitches at opposite sides of the inner edge. Yeehaw.

Hat connected by its straps: non-canonical but cute.

And that's it! Gummigoo is done.

I love my lil guy. Hope nothing bad happens to him when I show my friend Caine

[thehomelybrewster]

1d8 "Free" Fantasy RPGs To Replace 5e At Your Table

D&D 5e sure is a roleplaying game, and it's one that I have enjoyed a lot. However, that doesn't mean that I'd recommend it automatically for other people. This has many reasons, which I won't elaborate here. It has also shaped the perception of TTRPGs significantly thanks to its market dominance, and not in a good way.

5e has a reputation for being an expensive, complex game, and 5e players fear that other RPGs might just be the same. That it's too much of a hassle and too much of a financial burden to switch systems.

So, to help 5e players pick out a different system, I've made this handy 1d8 rolling table to help them pick a fantasy TTRPG with a combat component that they can try instead!

Let's now go through these eight nine RPGs and see what's up with them, right below the "Keep reading" section!

I'll be listing some metrics like the page count for the rulebook(s), the core resolution mechanic, how complex the game is in terms of character creation & combat, and how well-supported the game is by their publisher and the community-at-large.

1. Cairn

Author: Yochai Gal

Release Year: 2020

Cost: Free PDF, printed copies cost between $3 to $10 depending on the print quality.

Page Count: 24

Website: https://cairnrpg.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 Roll Under system for ability checks/saving throws, attacks hit automatically, "fiction-first".

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Random character creation, class-less and level-less, advancement based on "Scars" (suffering damage that reduces your HP exactly to 0)

Setting: Implied. Low-magic European-style fantasy; mysterious woodlands.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Hit Protection and Ability damage instead of HP, Slot-Based Inventory.

Degree of Support: Very high. Available in fifteen languages (e.g. Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and German); full rules text is under CC-BY-SA 4.0; multiple published third-party adventures & supplements available; some official bonus material (e.g. bestiary, magic items/relics, and spells) is available for free on the website.

Addendum: An expanded 2nd Edition is currently on Kickstarter (ends April 26th 2024); Cairn is legitimately easy to learn, however the Hit Protection system and the connected Scars system is a very different abstraction to health and advancement compared to 5e.

2. Cloud Empress

Author: worlds by watt

Release Year: 2023

Cost: Free PDF of the rulebook and the creator-written sample adventure "Last Voyage of the Bean Barge", $20 for the print edition of the rulebook, $12 for PDF supplements, $25 for print + PDF supplements; free solo rules also available as PDF only.

Page Count: 60

Website: https://cloudempress.com/

Resolution Mechanic: d100 Roll Under system for stat checks/saving throws, critical successes or failures on doubles (11, 22, 33, etc.), 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, attacks generally hit automatically.

Action Economy: Two actions per round with no free movement.

Characters: Semi-random character creation, four classes ("jobs"), no rules for character advancement in the ruleset.

Setting: Specific. "Ecological science fantasy" heavily inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind"; costly magic, giant insects, dangerous mushrooms; only human player characters.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Damage points culminate in Wounds; Wounds and Stress as ways to track your character's physical and mental state; slot-based inventory system.

Degree of Support: Low-ish. Several official supplements exist, however third-party material is very sparse. May improve due to the recent establishment of a Cloud Empress Creators Fund, has a simple 3rd party license system.

Addendum: A supplement, "Cloud Empress: Life & Death" is currently on Kickstarter (ends April 26th 2024, yes, the same day as Cairn 2e) and as a disclaimer I even backed that current Kickstarter; Cloud Empress is built on the engine of the sci-fi horror RPG "Mothership"; clearly built for one-shots and short campaigns; has a wonderful resting system that encourages roleplay between players.

3. Iron Halberd

Author: level2janitor

Release Year: 2023

Cost: Free PDF of the rules; no print option available.

Page Count: 60

Website: https://level2janitor.itch.io/iron-halberd

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 + Bonus Roll Over system against difficulty or armor rating, however most non-combat-related actions follow a fiction first approach without dice rolls.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Semi-random character creation, class-less but there are four different "gear kits" that nudge your character towards certain archetypes, levelling up with XP.

Setting: Essentially non-existant. General European fantasy with magic, gods may or may not exist/shape the world, various fantastic ancestries included.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Includes rules for building strongholds and maintaining warbands; slot-based inventory with a durability mechanic.

Degree of Support: None. The game is intended to be relatively compatible with other OSR content and the creator suggests using adventures made for the D&D retroclone Old-School Essentials if you wanna use pre-published ones. An official introductory adventure, "Sea-Spray Bay", is apparently in the works. No 3rd party license available, as far as I know.

Addendum: One thing about Iron Halberd I like especially is how it uses random tables for generating equipment. Most of the equipment is listed in a numerical order by category, and the various gear kits include references on different rolling formulas for those equipment categories. For example someone taking the "soldier's kit" rolls twice on the d20 Weapons table and takes their preferred pick, while someone taking the "sage's kit" only rolls a d4 on that table.

4. Mausritter

Author: Isaac Williams

Release Year: 2020

Cost: Free PDF of the ruleset available; box set with the rules and several goodies including an adventure costs $55; additional box set + PDFs containing eleven official adventures costs $55 (or $20 digital-only).

Page Count: 48

Website: https://mausritter.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 Roll Under system, 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, attacks always hit.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Random character creation, class-less, levelling up with XP.

Setting: Vaguely specific. You play as mice and everything is related to mouse-size; cats are the equivalents of devils or dragons; humans exist as a setting background but may or may not be present in a campaign.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Includes rules for recruiting warbands; slot-based inventory with a durability mechanic.

Degree of Support: Very high. Several official supplements exist, as well as loads of content, be it adventures or supplements, made by other creators. Available in seven languages (all of them however are European). Has a simple 3rd party license system.

Addendum: Mausritter uses the phrase "adventure site" instead of dungeons. On the website a free adventure site generator is available, as is a digital tool that can be used to generate your own item cards for the slot-based inventory system.

5. Maze Rats

Author: Ben Milton

Release Year: 2017

Cost: $4.99 for the PDF, no print option regularly available.

Page Count: 32

Website: https://questingbeast.substack.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 2d6 + Bonus Roll Over system; advantage system that uses 3d6 drop the lowest + Bonus.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Semi-random character creation, class-less but instead there are character features (e.g. spell slots or attack bonuses), levelling up with XP.

Setting: Essentially non-existant. Magic is very irregular (s. the section below), but otherwise it implies a vaguely European fantasy setting.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Spells are randomly generated each adventuring day and spell effects are negotiated between the GM and the spellcasting player; includes several fantastic d66 tables that can be used to randomly generate worlds.

Degree of Support: Decent. The rule text is licensed under CC BY 4.0 and unofficial translations are available. Some third-party content has been made specifically for the game.

Addendum: The only purchase-only game on this list. However "unofficial" distribution of the PDF is very common. Also this is the oldest game on the list. Ben "Questing Beast" Milton is a prolific OSR blogger and runs a YouTube channel on the OSR. Great dude.

6. Sherwood - A Game of Outlaws & Arcana

Author: Richard Ruane

Release Year: 2022

Cost: Free quickstart PDF titled "Sherwood - A Quickstart of Outlaws" available; digital rulebook costs $7.50 and the print edition (including PDF) costs $15.

Page Count: 25 (Quickstart), 32 (Rulebook)

Website: https://www.r-rook.studio/

Resolution Mechanic: 2d6 + Bonus Roll Over system for skill checks (including attacks), 2d6 Roll Under system for saving throws; advantage & disadvantage system that involves rolling 3d6 and using the higher/lower of the two results; almost all rolls are player-facing

Action Economy: "Conversational", assumption of movement + action.

Characters: Largely choice-based character creation. Combine two (of six) background abilities with the benefits of seven different careers. Big focus on interpersonal relationships during character creation. Limited character advancement takes place during downtime.

Setting: Specific. Takes place in a fantastical version of 13th century England, with fey and magic coexisting with outlaws and crusaders.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: The group of outlaws possesses two shared resources (Resources and Legend) that can be spent to gain certain benefits; spellcasting is divided into two categories: arcane talents and sorcerous rites, with the former being immediate and the later taking significant time; slot-based inventory.

Degree of Support: None. No further publications exist for the game and while it is published under the CC-BY 4.0 license, no third-party content exists as far as I know. It does include a guide on how to convert D&D and Troika (N)PCs into Sherwood characters, as well as three adventure seeds (one in the Quickstart, two in the rules), which is at least something.

Addendum: Might just be the game on this list that encourages the most roleplaying; the character sheet is sadly very provisional-feeling and the Quickstart feels outdated compared to the finalized rulebook.

7. The Electrum Archive

Author: Emiel Boven

Release Year: 2022

Cost: Free Rules PDF available, zines cost $12 as digital PDFs or $24 as print + PDF combos; the first zine contains the entire contents of the Free Rules PDF

Page Count: 26 (Free Rules), 72 (Issue 01)

Website: https://www.electrumarchive.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d10 Roll Under system, attacks always hit.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Largely choice-based; three archetypes roughly corresponding to fighters/rangers (Vagabonds), rogues (Fixers), and spellcasters (Warlocks); player characters are presumed to be human; levelling up with XP.

Setting: Specific. Mechanics heavily tie into the lore; humanity has abundant access to minerals but requires a rare substance known as Ink to operate certain pieces of tech (like guns) and cast spells but cannot produce Ink themselves; spirits of various sorts can be foes, targets of worship, or sources of power.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Uses a spellcasting system for the Warlock archetype that's heavily based on the one used in Maze Rats, as in it uses randomly-generated spells whose effects are negotiated between the player and the GM; slot-based inventory with a durability mechanic.

Degree of Support: Minimal. The game consists out of the free rules and (soon) two zines; a third party license exists but content produced under it is very rare.

Addendum: I need to disclaim that I recently backed the Kickstarter campaign for the second zine for this game; the free rules feature wrong page numbers in its table of contents which is unfortunate; The Electrum Archive uses incredibly simple stats for NPCs which makes creating new ones based on other games rather simple.

8. Shadowdark RPG

Author: Kelsey Dionne

Release Year: 2023

Cost: Free player and game master quickstarts exist as PDFs and are available in print for $19, the core rules cost $28 in PDF form and $57 in a print + PDF bundle

Page Count: 68 (Player Quickstart Guide), 68 (Game Master Quickstart Guide), 332 (Core Rules)

Website: https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 + Bonus Roll Over system, 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, natural 1s are critical failures and natural 20s are critical successes.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Largely choice-based; players have a fantasy ancestry and a class; levelling up with XP; class progression largely random.

Setting: Vague. General (dark) western fantasy conventions apply; alignment is a force in this universe and a sample pantheon is provided; the most potent enemies in the rules are named individuals that fit classic TTRPG monster types; illustrations and lore snippets have recurring motifs.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: The key mechanic of Shadowdark is how the game handles light, namely that light sources are tracked in real time (i.e. a normal torch lasts 1 hour), which increases tension; slot-based inventory; has a 0th-level character creation option using an eliminationist "Gauntlet".

Degree of Support: Fantastic. Several official supplements and offically sanctioned digital tools exist; lots of third-party content available under a generous third-party license.

Addendum: Definitely the most similar game to 5e on this list besides the next entry; very robust mechanically and the Core Rules features extensive lists of magic items, monsters, and spells; also for early play giving your players only access to the quickstart is a totally valid choice; and finally, before Dionne made Shadowdark, she made 5e adventures for years and it shows (affectionate).

9. Pathfinder

Authors: Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Mark Seifter

Release Year: 2019 (initial release), 2023 (remaster)

Cost: Free and comprehensive SRD available via the platform Archives of Nethys, free "Pathfinder Primer" abridged rulebook available via the Pathfinder Nexus (powered by Demiplane), Core books are priced $20 for PDFs and $30/$60 for print as a softcover/hardcover; a Beginner Box set with shortened soft-cover rules costs $45

Page Count: 464 (Player Core), 336 (GM Core), 376 (Monster Core), 160 (Combined Beginner Box Softcovers)

Website: https://paizo.com/pathfinder

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 + Bonus Roll Over system, 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, four degrees of success based on result compared to target number.

Action Economy: Three action points per round; various actions may require more than one point; every character can use one reaction per round of combat.

Characters: Choice-based; players first pick an ancestry and a background and a class (the ABCs) and then tend to have meaningful choices after each level-up; levelling up with XP.

Setting: Important. Golarion, the game's setting, is a world that has been long in development and it shows; powerful magic and influential gods; very clear notions of what the societies of the various peoples of the world are like and how they should behave.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Balance between character classes and reliable combat challenge calculations are an important design goal; weight-based inventory system; archetype system for "multiclassing".

Degree of Support: Fantastic. Loads of content gets regularly produced by the game's publisher Paizo; the Pathfinder Infinite program (similar to D&D's Dungeon Master's Guild) provides lots of lore-compliant third-party content; uses the ORC third-party license for content produced outside of the Pathfinder Infinite program. Translations into other languages available but Paizo does not provide a comprehensive list of available languages (only German and French confirmed after brief personal research).

Addendum: The most popular and commercially successful of the listed games; but also by far the most complicated, though it is easier to GM for specificallty than 5e; also I dislike how certain feats create situations where fairly mundane actions get mechanics through these feats instead of being things you can generally do; anyway the reason why it's a 9 on a 1d8 table is because if you wanted to try out Pathfinder 2e you already would have and because while Paizo is better than WotC it's still a flawed big company.

...

So this was an exhausting little project. I hope you found this helpful and I hope you give at least one of these games a shot! A follow-up to this post is not out of the cards, but I don't plan on one.

Before we go, have this poll about which of these systems you're most looking forward to try! Shame it can only be open for one week...

[lady-phasma]

Every time I see a tag that Interview with the Vampire or any of its cast and crew should be nominated for or receive an Emmy award I get frustrated with AMC. They made themselves ineligible for the current round of Emmy nominations. They could be eligible for next year, but that's a long delay for a season that ends June 30.

From the 76th Emmy Awards, Rules & Proceedures, link to PDF:

Eligibility period: June 1, 2023 - May 31, 2024.

The required number of episodes from a series must premiere nationally by May 31 to be eligible in the current Emmy competition. (Six episodes are required for series in animation, comedy, drama, variety, short form, and reality categories. Three episodes are required for documentary series and hosted nonfiction series.)

Which is incredibly disappointing when such wonderful performances, writing, music, sets, and costumes were delivered in season two.

[works-of-fanfiction]

Empty Spaces || Lando Norris x ex!Reader

Summary: Lando and Y/N broke up a few months ago but can’t seem to stay away from each other. 

Song: affection - BETWEEN FRIENDS 

Warnings: Implied smut and mentions of sex. Swearing and a lil’ bit of angst. 

Word Count: 3.2k

a/n: I told y’all I’m in my Lando era! please listen to the above song if you have a minute; it really describes how I imagined the characters to feel during this oneshot. enjoy! 

"I love you." 

“No, you don’t.”  

Those three fateful words rolled off of Lando's tongue too easily. The flick of the L, the rounding of the O, teeth meeting at the V, it was like muscle memory for him. It was easy to say he loved her when she was lying naked in his bed, her chest rising and falling slowly, hair splayed across the pillow. It was like Groundhog Day for them. They’d fuck, followed by an awkward silence, followed by Y/N rushing to the bathroom then returning with her eyes glued to the floor. She’d lie on the very edge of the bed as far away from him as possible and try to catch her breath whilst she thought about every reason why she shouldn’t have let it happen again. 

The thing about sleeping with an ex is that it’s just too easy. It’s not simple, but so. damn. easy. You eliminate the trouble of meeting someone new and pretending to care about their family dog, or their little niece who just took her first steps. Instead, you’re able to climb on top of, or lie beneath probably one of the only people in the world who know exactly what you want and exactly how you want it. And in those few moments when it’s just two bodies messily colliding, the people within those bodies don’t need to think about the terrible decision they’re making. Lando had certainly never regretted a thing with Y/N’s legs wrapped around his waist. 

She liked to call their little liaisons ‘accidents’. In her mind, showing up to his door with a bottle of wine in less than acceptable clothing was nothing more than a mishap. The temporary fun and the need for familiarity completely clouded her judgement, at least until the deed was done. Being beneath Lando delayed the agonising process of getting over him. Regrettable sex was somehow less painful than facing their reality and accepting that they were no longer meant for each other. How were the two supposed to let go of the person they’d once considered to be their soulmate? 

“You’re hogging the bottle again.” Y/N groaned, reaching over to snatch the wine from Lando’s grasp. 

“That just proves I need it more.” 

Drinking had become a great distraction for them. The sex was a distraction from the breakup, and the booze was a distraction from the sex, and they couldn’t have one without the other. 

Y/N laid on the floor whilst Lando sat propped against the wardrobe with one elbow resting on his knee. He plucked at the carpet absentmindedly, the friction reddening the tips of his fingers. His eyes wandered around the room and Y/N watched on, wondering what was going through his head. Was he overthinking everything just as much as she was? 

After four months of back and forth fighting, they’d fallen out of sync. No amount of love or history shared could protect them from the inevitable. They made each other miserable, and as much as they tried to fix and talk through it, it wasn’t enough. It was when Y/N failed to show up for the Spanish Grand Prix that Lando realised it was really over. Every time their schedules aligned, he’d bought her a plane ticket and tracked her flight until the very second she landed. Spain was no different, despite the condition their relationship was in. She’d gotten the email as usual, the PDF attached and a little ‘can’t wait to see you’ message from Lando. It was the first time the message had felt like a lie. He couldn’t possibly be excited to see her, and she knew seeing him would crush her completely. She had to change her phone wallpaper to one of the default landscapes to avoid staring at his face every time she got a text. 

Y/N grimaced as she sipped the wine, pulling the bottle back to read the label. After polishing off the petrol station’s finest Malbec, the best Lando could offer was a bottle of Pinot Grigio he found in the back of the cabinet, which was evidently not her favourite. Despite her distaste, she went back for another swig, swallowing hard so the liquid would barely graze her tongue. 

Silence fell between them, not awkward but filled with uncertainty. Lando’s head was littered with questions, but he found it almost impossible to focus with her sprawled out on his floor, legs bare and his t-shirt hardly covering her. He wanted to climb on top of her, crawl all over her and devour every inch until she was crying and begging him to take her back and love her all over again. Realistically, he knew it wouldn’t work and they’d never go back to how they used to be, but he didn’t know how to let go. A selfish part of him wanted to hold on and keep her around, despite just how much it was hurting them both. Every time he let those words slip out, they left a sour taste in his mouth, and a bruise on Y/N’s heart. She couldn’t stand hearing those words uttered when they had no weight behind them, but she’d much rather take those over no words at all.

The first time she’d showed up to his apartment after hours, it felt like he’d somehow wished her into existence. It had been a particularly hard weekend following tons of media appearances and unwelcome questions. Sometimes it felt like he couldn’t do anything right by the media; even an improved performance in Austria wasn’t enough to get them off his back. Having a thousand people congratulate him felt great, but there were always people whispering in the background - it was a one-off. It was a fluke! McLaren can’t keep giving this kid so many chances. 

Arriving back in the UK ready for Silverstone was bittersweet, as his excitement was clouded by the pressure and prying eyes of fans, reporters, and everyone in between. He didn’t know who he could turn to as his feelings felt so trivial, and it crossed his mind just how easy it once was to talk to Y/N and offload everything that had been weighing him down. It was strange for her not to be there, so when the notification pinged on his phone that there had been movement detected by the Ring camera, he was surprised to see her standing on his doorstep. The image was blurry but it was unmistakably Y/N, as she rocked back and forth on her heels, one hand clutching a bottle, the other tucked into the pocket of her - Lando’s - hoodie. 

“…Hi.” 

“Hi.” 

“I uh, saw the result from Austria.” 

“Oh yeah?” 

“You did great. Really uh… Fuck, I don’t know what I’m doing here.” 

“Neither do I.” 

Unsure what to say, she thrust the bottle into Lando’s chest and he felt forced to take it. “Thank you… I guess.” 

“Yeah.” She hesitated for a second, hands coming up as if she was ready to speak, but instead she turned and started to walk away. 

“Y/N.” 

“Yeah?” She spun quickly, looking back at the doors that once led into her home; looking back at the man she’d once considered to be her home. 

“What are you doing here?” 

He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer. She wasn’t sure she really had one. Something in her told her that she needed to see him, and before she could think it through, she was already halfway down the motorway with the bottle of Rosé she’d been given on her last birthday rolling across the backseats. 

That night, he made the mistake of inviting her inside and popping open the bottle to pour them both a larger than average glass. He made the mistake of confiding in her, telling her everything about the Austrian Grand Prix and how it still welcomed unpleasant press despite his P4 result. He made the mistake of hugging her, sinking into her chest and inhaling the scent that once grounded him and reminded him he was safe. He didn’t mean to kiss her, and she didn’t mean to run her hands through his curls as she kissed him back. She wasn’t supposed to push his shorts down and climb on top of him on the sofa, and he never should have whispered how much he’d missed her as he came inside her.  

After his podium at Silverstone, Y/N had frequented his apartment a lot in the two weeks before he left for Hungary. The first time was to ‘congratulate’ him and he was more than happy to celebrate with her on her knees before him. They couldn’t stay away from each other after that. As long as they had alcohol in their systems, they couldn’t seem to control their urges. It was when the effects wore off that the regret started to seep in. 

They didn’t miss each other outside of the intimacy and affection. There was nothing left to mourn about their tumultuous relationship; the constant fights and distance keeping them apart. Y/N tried to attend as many races as possible, but a race weekend wasn’t exactly ideal for spending time with her boyfriend. He was far too busy on the track, and she was often left to mingle with strangers or keep herself occupied at the hospitality unit. The most quality time she got with him was being there when he passed out in their hotel room, leaving her to order room service and eat it quietly in the corner alone. 

“Lando.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Can you come here?” 

“Okay.” 

Gently taking the bottle from her hand, Lando placed it on the drawers before lying down beside her on the ground. The carpet rubbed harshly against his back as he wriggled to get comfortable. The two laid flat, staring up at the ceiling where a light bulb had recently gone out that Lando had meant to change. Y/N had joked about it creating mood lighting a couple weeks ago, and that one little remark had stopped him from taking the new bulb out of its box. 

Hesitantly, she walked her fingers along the carpet until they met his. The slight touch made heat rush through Lando’s hand and up his arm, and his chest tightened as she linked her little finger with his. She didn’t have it in her to hold his hand properly. She thought if she did, all the hurt and sadness would flood to the surface and she’d be a sobbing mess on the floor. As much as they craved each other’s touch, joining hands felt too intimate compared to having sex. The smaller, softer touches terrified them.  

“I think we should stop this.” Y/N thought out loud. 

“You think we should?”

“I think we need to.” She turned her head, Lando turning his at the same time. He tightened his grip on her finger, dreading the feeling of her letting go. This wasn’t the first time they’d tried to have this conversation, but the very same sick feeling still swirled around in his stomach. If they stopped this, they’d have to promise never to see one another again, and neither were sure they could do that.

“Okay.” 

“Okay? Is that all you’re going to say? Okay?” She propped herself up on her elbows and he followed, mirroring her. 

“What else do you want me to say? I can’t beg you to keep doing this.” 

But that was exactly what she wanted. She hated how disassociated they’d become, and how having sex had moulded into some fucked up routine they couldn’t get out of. She wanted to feel something, for it all to mean something but it didn’t. It really was just sex. Just seriously messed up sex between two exes that couldn’t face the facts and let the breakup be final. All the times he’d accidentally said he missed her or loved her had been exactly that - accidents. 

“I just… I don’t know what this is, what it means.” Her voice got stuck in her throat as if something was telling her to keep her feelings to herself. 

“I thought we agreed it meant nothing.” 

“Did we? Or did we just say that to make ourselves feel better?” 

She sat up, scooting to sit against the bed frame. Bringing her knees to her chest, she hugged herself tightly, begging herself not to get upset in front of Lando. He shuffled over, sitting opposite with his feet almost overlapping hers. “I can’t pretend this doesn’t hurt, because it does.”

“…I know.” He agreed quietly, looking down to fidget with his fingers. She stared at the top of his head, the mound of curls unruly from her touch.

It made her sad just to look at him. The memories would come flooding back like a tidal wave, and she didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream at the top of her lungs. She wanted to hit him, scream at him for breaking her heart and ruining what they had. She wished she could turn back time and never meet him or develop some kind of magic power to erase her own memory and make him disappear. At the same time, she longed to hold him, to tangle her body with his and never let go. Imagining her life without him in it made no sense. He had been a constant for two years, so how could she completely cut him off and forget about him?

“Nothing good can come of this.” She spoke, mostly to convince herself.

“I know.”

Y/N sighed in frustration, throwing her arms down to the ground. “You know? That’s all you can say?”

Lando didn’t know how to respond. Did she expect him to offer her advice? How could he comfort her when he was in the exact same position?

“Tell me what to do Lando, just tell me.” Tears began to well in her eyes, threatening to fall as she bit the inside of her cheeks. “I… I don’t think I can keep doing this, but I can’t… Fuck.” The first tear slid down her cheek, and she pawed at her face to wipe it away before he saw.

“Y/N…” He reached out to touch her, but she pulled her arm away. “Y/N, come on.”

“Don’t do that. Please don’t.” She closed her eyes, concentrating on her breathing to try and stop the tears from flowing. “You broke my heart, Lando.” She whispered, saying the words aloud for the first time.

“And you broke mine.”

She looked up, meeting his gaze. Her eyes stung as she looked at him, studying the anguish in his brow and the tightening of his lips. “I… I’m sorry.”

“Are you? Are you? Because you’re the one who showed up at my door and didn’t give me the chance to get over you.” Lando hissed, his tone far more aggressive than he intended. He saw how this upset her and immediately rose to his knees to inch closer to her. “Y/N, I didn’t – “

“No, you’re right. I should never have showed up and practically begged you to fuck me. This is all my fault, that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?” She seethed, anger mixing with her sadness to create a truly messed up cocktail of emotions.

“That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you meant, right? If I’d never shown up here after Austria, none of this would’ve happened, we wouldn’t be in this mess, and you would have moved on.”

“How do you know that?” He asked, sinking back down to sit cross-legged. “Go on, tell me. How could you possibly know that? Do you really think I could move on that easily?”

“But you just - “ 

“Yes, I know what I said.” He sighed, holding his head in his hands and running his fingers through his hair. “I’m not blaming you. This is just as much my doing as yours.” 

Silence fell between them again, Y/N’s tears drying and Lando’s pounding heart slowing to its regular pace. How many times were they going to have the same conversation? What two people spent more time discussing their breakup than actually going through it? 

He moved towards her, seeking consent in her eyes before sitting down. She nodded, tucking her elbows in so he could comfortably sit next to her. Laying her hand on the ground, Lando placed his on top and slotted his fingers between hers. 

“This is shit.” She declared.

“This is shit.” He agreed. 

Once again, they turned their heads to look at each other simultaneously. The redness in her water line and the tears trapped in her eyelashes made Lando’s chest ache. He wished there was something he could do to take the pain away and make this easier for the both of them. He was yet to cry over the breakup as he mostly felt numb inside, but he knew it would come eventually. He feared it. He didn’t want to cry, especially not over something he could’ve prevented if he’d tried hard enough. 

Y/N analysed Lando’s blank expression, the dark bags beneath his eyes making his entire face appear duller. She hated seeing him like this, as he’d always been so unbelievably full of life and constantly smiling. She wondered how much sleep he’d been getting. Was he cradling his pillow to fill the empty space in his arms at night? Or was she the only one who needed the comfort of something to hold in order to drift off? 

With their faces so close, they could feel each other breathing. Instinctively, Y/N’s eyes fluttered closed, her breaths becoming more shallow as Lando tilted his face closer. Curling his finger under her chin, he guided her towards him. “If we do this, it has to be the last time.” He whispered, his bottom lip grazing hers, eliciting a gasp from deep within her chest. 

“The last time.” She breathed, desperate for him to kiss her. He closed the gap between them, softly pressing his lips against hers. Quietly, she moaned into his mouth as he opened it just enough for her to slide her tongue past his lips. Tasting traces of the white wine on each other’s tongues, they laid back down on the carpet, Lando keeping a hand beneath her head for support.

She hooked her legs around his hips to pull him closer as she sucked his bottom lip into her mouth. He groaned, reaching down to push his shorts past his knees. Y/N balanced on her back, lifting her ass in the air so he could undress her with ease.

Their night ended how it always did. They held each other close as Lando fucked her slowly, trying to delay the moment for as long as possible. Over and over they told each other it would be the last time, knowing that they were lying to themselves.

It wouldn’t be the last time. 

[in-case-of-grace]

ONESIX HYPERFIX(ED)

A free 2+ player hyperfixating TTRPG I made, and goofed up, now fixed!

You are having a normal, mundane conversation together— which is exactly the problem, it isn’t about your hyperfixation!

You can get the PDF version on the itch page (and donate if you're so inclined), or download the image version below!

Now the elephant in the room, how did I goof up? So, you'll notice how the above image is kinda split into two halves. That top half was the original game.

I uh...accidentally opened my half letter format in Publisher when I first made ONESIX HYPERFIX. So it wasn't great for printing as a single pager, like at all.

I had also upped my layout game for it, and I couldn't simple scale it up to fit a full letter!

So, I made the layout vertical, and added a second "page" full of optional frame and hyperfixation tables. Not only does this mean you can uh...actually print the thing now, it should also help you enjoy ONESIX HYPERFIX for longer, and enable you to have more fun with it!

I also took the opportunity to clean up some minor design flaws that had been bothering me for a bit, and made all the tables have rounded corners (as I finally figured how to do so)!

The original half letter format is still included as optional files, for those with sharp objects and a dream.

I won't repeat this mistake in the future, and I apologize to my A4-using friends for the close margins here, unfortunately that couldn't be resolved easily. My other single pagers are properly formatted for both letter and A4 paper, as will my future games!

[queer-ragnelle]

I saw your list of favorite Arthuriana authors and I can't help but ask for a few of them. What can you tell me about...?

Gerald Morris

Phillis Ann Karr

John Erskine

Marvin Borowsky

Hi anon!

Gerald Morris is the author of The Squire’s Tales, a 10 book children’s series that covers many points of view. A lot of lesser appreciated side characters get focus, like Gaheris, Dinadan, and Lunete. He also has another series written for an even younger audience called The Knights’ Tales. These are still in print and Mr. Morris alive, so I’ve linked to goodreads and you can decide from there if you want to get the books from the library or buy them.

Phyllis Ann Karr is the author of murder mystery Idylls of the Queen which covers the story of the apple poisoning in Le Morte d’Arthur and subsequent search for the culprit. It’s written from first person Kay perspective with deuteragonist Mordred. It’s excellent. She also wrote The Arthurian Companion (which is out of print, so that link is a PDF), The Follies of Sir Harald, and recently published a compilation of short stories that were previously included in now defunct anthologies called Arthurian Tales. They’re all wonderful.

John Erskine wrote two Arthurian books, one is Galahad and I actually haven’t read that one yet but have heard good things. He has another one called Restoring Palamede which is mostly from Palomides perspective and really goes a long way of handling his character with respect and dignity previously never explored. I loved it a lot! It’s an old book so it’s far from perfect in its depiction of a Muslim family (Palomides’ parents are both in it too!) but the effort comes from a good place and was enjoyable. Those links are PDFs where you can read them too!

Marvin Borowsky has a single novel to his name and that novel is The Queen’s Knight. I thrifted this on a whim as I’d never heard of it. Anon, I devoured it in a single day. Enthralled, I tell you. It reminds me of Knights of the Round Table (1953) in that Mordred is an adult from the start as another warlord butting heads with Arthur. The majority of the book is in Lucan the Butler’s point of view, sometimes switching to Mordred or Arthur, and has omnipresent narrative at times too which occasionally dips into other characters’ minds. This book has a whopping four ratings on good reads (one of which is me) and no cover. It’s so niche. Mordred is gay in it (content warning for pederasty) and near the end of the book has a loving relationship with another knight. Agravaine also appears to be hopelessly in love with Lancelot the whole time. I like the characterizations of Orkney bros, Kay, Lucan and kin, Guinevere. Most of the characters really! The writing style is delicious. Lucan’s wife Jocelyn and Kay’s mother Margaret are both fun characters. I also find it endearing that this book has a newspaper article dedicated to it, published April 10, 1955!!! My friend @waleweinn was able to get it for me. Check it out!

[dartagnantt]

Trickery Domain: Revised | Making a domain more than just its one feature

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here! I release everything for free, so your support makes this possible. I'm working on a new class for 5e! Follow the Kickstarter here! I've also started making a new system based off of 5e, 6th Dawn! Become a patron and join the playtest.

So, in this month of deceit, what sort of trickery could I devise? No… revise! Haha! I've always been slightly disappointed in the trickery domain. It has one of the coolest channel divinities (the coolest belonging to forge) but past that, everything else is unremarkable. At will advantage on stealth for one person. Be invisible for 1 round when you could be doing the cool thing. and finally cool thing, but stronger! The divine strike was okay, but that's also the one thing that it only had one of two options for anyway

Bonus Proficiency

Behold the divine providence of lies! What do you mean it doesn't teach you to lie? I considered getting disguise kit, but I solved that with the next issue.

Sacred Mask

So, warlock's get unlimited disguise self at level 2, so what if a cleric could too? But how do I rationalise making it more limited, I know! By making it mundane so as to bypass divination magic

Invoke Duplicity

How do you improve upon perfection? Not sure, but I had to do something. I am all for fuckery with a doppleganger of some sort, well, I decided that making an important feature of this CD require melee combat doesn't really fit every kind of trickster. But what is tricky? What if what you thought was an illusion is now suddenly real?

Redirect Attack

I was inspired by the old treachery paladin and this seemed fun. This could probably do with some kind of restriction, but one reaction per round is a pretty good limit

Sacred Visions

When designing domain capstones, I find it useful to ask 'what is the ideal of this aspect?' So, when tricking someone, what if it was REALLY convincing? This is similar to my programmed hallucination spell, but more specific.

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

School of Illusion: Revised

Oath of Discord

Modular Airships

Lightspawn

I also have three classes, and a splatbook over on DriveThrueRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

The Werebeast. A class that turns you into a half beast to destroy your foes.

d'Artagnan's Adventurer Almanac. A compendium of races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters and more!

[boin-de-bindery]

All Shook Up / É tutto cosí semplice by ke_vl

My first têtê-bêche binding! First and foremost, thank you ke_vl for trusting me with your AikuSen fics and agreeing to let me bind them 🧡 please check out All Shook Up and É tutto cosí semplice, two stories which catch me in the feels every re-read.

For this project I had to work out how to format both fics into signatures so that the latter one would sit upside down. I was fortunately able to wrangle one fic into 96 pages, while the other ran to 80. Since both are divisible by sixteen, this allowed for the fics to be formatted into self-contained 4-sheet signatures. Hey presto! So rather than navigate inverting PDFs, I printed the two fics separately, then sewed the latter set of signatures on upside down. It was a lot easier than expected, thanks to the numbers working out so neatly.

This is also my first paper cover bind, with recycled 150gsm cotton paper from Søstrene Grene. Adhesive backed vinyl for the cover graphics and text, bound together using kettle stitch. I'm not sure of what brand the endpapers are, but they're 110gsm and pretty sturdy. The endpapers and headbands reference Aiku's heterochromia, while the cover paper is peachy like Sendou lmao. rip blond Sendou

In terms of typesetting, I've found a formula that works for me and my printer... mostly. The margins are a little wide still, even after a round with the chisel. I've pretty much given up on that as a method of page trimming—it scuffs and tears the edges too badly.

Some further WIP pictures/commentary under the cut, since I actually took some for once!

Sewn textblock, then with added headbands/mull. The kettle stitch took me ages for some reason... considering going back to French link stitch for the next project, I think it's quicker.

The headbands are a little scrunched up but I'm happy with them. Green and purple is a pleasing combo.

Completed casing and textblock, then the weeded adhesive vinyl—supervised by Chigiri 👑

I always tell myself my Cricut can handle cursive and thin fonts as long as they're big enough... it really can't 🥲 Had to redesign and reprint the author name / spine titling for É tutto cosí semplice since my original design was too bitty. Weeding was hell regardless. HTV is so much easier to wrangle, but I have loads of the adhesive stuff to use up before I let myself buy more HTV.

I had a concern that the cover paper design was too busy for the vinyl to stand out on. In the end, the purple looks fine, but I think the reverse cover would look better if I'd used a darker green.

The last issue with the book is how jank the spine looks when the cover is laid flat. I think I glued the purple side of the text block too close to the edge of the coverboard, making the other side bunch? That or yet again, I made the spine stiffener too wide. It's not super noticeable when the book is closed. Hoping to improve on this in future binds!

My favourite detail is inspired by a têtê-bêche novel I owned in childhood (Sisters... No Way! by Siobhán Parkinson) It's written from two perspectives, and when you'd finished reading one, my copy had a note telling you to flip over and read the other side. I did the same thing here, accompanied by panels of the two boys nabbed from the manga.