Reasons for making this blog

A while back I stumbled on a marvellous blog called Last Gasp Grimoire, this is the story of how it ruined my life.

While reading I came upon page called Corpathium, an idea for setting generation using handful of funny shaped dice. All based on a book called Viriconium by M. John Harrison. After a quick search I immediately decided to get one myself, it hit tome with multiple themes I enjoyed. And that slowly spiralled out of control

More and more appendix N themed literature was acquired.
Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Collected Fantasies by Clark Ashton Smith.

Meanwhile I still kept digging thru OSR clones deeper and deeper. And one starts inadvertently mixing things together.Why isn`t there a Dying Earth genre retro clone ( there might be, I just haven`t seen any). Well there was Numenera, I like the setting, not fan of system and writing, but it did its damage.

How it all starts

Other noteworthy thing is one of local buddies started organising Eclipse Phase game, so as one should you slowly start researching into that. Spend way to much time in Orion's Arm transhuman wiki hellhole (warning exposure might lead to a chance of going down the rabbit hole). But I started having thoughts like, Dying Earth is kinda old now, and science has advanced in rapid pace, think of all the cool shit that we know! What would it look like if it was written now? Internet. Advent of cybernetics. Nanotechnologies. 3d printing ( i recently learned people are having ideas about 4d printing already) Space elevators. Mega scale engineering. Stellar engineering. There are people out there thinking about moving stars!

How it ends? Snorting pixie dust of a unicorn. Thats how!

Ive been sitting on this for a while, but like some sick wizard spells its staring to burn a hole in my brain. I kinda want to put this down somewhere and maybe organise everything along the way in something more usable then bunch of random ideas.

So mission! Make a science / science-fantasy inspired setting dressed up in fantasy clothing I would want to play myself. And hope no one can tell I am making shit up as I go most of the time.


P.S You should really read Viriconium if you have not before.

Copyright infringement is highest form of flattery?

In an effort to help spread a word of some of the people out there in the bloggosphere, im making a series of posts.

A while back I made a thing for a game I was planning to run, one of the first proper OSR thing for my meatspace friends. OSR is relatively obscure here, so it was a test run of sorts. Went surprisingly well and  people enjoyed it. The low hitpoints, Gold for XP, the whole affair. Until it all fell apart badly due to real life. So im not sure when I`ll get that chance to use this, and maybe someone will find this useful.

(made with fantasy city map generator)

First one on the list - Last Gasp Grimoire, (not for work place safe, probably not safe for human consumption either to be honest),the master of all things gross and fascinating at the same time. The crowning achievement of LGG in my eyes is Cörpathium city generation tables. These are pure gold of usable material, roll a handful of funny shaped dice, compare the result and dice that generated the result on the table, and get a city. Easy. Elegant.

Next up - Red Box Vancouver. The game I was planning to run was Nightmares Underneath starter adventure The City of Poison. Easiest way i could describe that game is golden age Ottoman Ghostbusters, stealing magical couches from forces of darkness. Its a fascinating and very evocative book. The dungeons are alive and hungry, and they feed on human emotions, the bad ones. That couch the players are stealing? Someone was probably murdered on it. It has some rules i really like, how spells work, and the cultist class(renamed cleric, because that one never sat well with me). I think it uses heavily modified OD&D ruleset.



So what happens when you combine both of them?

Saarnathium the City of Dreams

The grand city of Sarnathium, otherwise known as Sarnath-Nenth, the Jewel of the Kingdom of dreams. The great festering city at the edge of Red Desert, full of merchant princes, madman and poets. Countless cults to long forgotten gods make their temples here, scholars toil on uncovering the secrets of universe. At the behest of merchant princes new trade routes are discovered, wealth and exotic wares from far away lands flows thru the Bazaarmaw. Yet most of the population of the great slumbering beast lives in squalor and poverty.


Using LGG tables i made a city reskined for Arabic adventures. You can get it here, it contains modified burroughs and locations from Cörpathium, all linked to an image here using only the results I rolled when creating city. How does this work? There is an urban map with locations, each location is linked to a appropriately named document in the folder, click on the link in the image, and Woila! There are 2 documents for each locations(at least that was the intent) one is for sharing with players and another for GM notes. File 0 can be used for introduction to the city and some rules. And I added the adventure hook from the City of Poison, which if you read it is Artists Quarter, bordering the great Bazaar.

P.S. Whole thing might not be finished.

P.S.S And there are some session notes I am to lazy to clean out in 8am after a night shift.


Edit. After Getting my grubby hands on Through Ultan`s Door #1.
Now on clear night sky, high above the city of Sarnaathium one can sometimes see the city of Zyan, sailing gently on the winds drifting in and out of endless dream. More then one unfortunate adventurer has fallen from sky and found themselves stranded here.

Keeping track of things

So time to plug some of the better organised relief efforts from the ones ive seen so far.

• OSR Blog Roll started by I have no idea who anymore. This thing just keeps going around. Which is giant honking list of, You guessed it,blogs.  Link here. And instructions how to set up OPML feed here.
• A list of new groups on MeWe as curated by Evan Edwards, which you can find either on his MW profile or link here.
• another blog-roll here , non-osr by Jack Shear
• another link worth checking here, Old School RPG Planet OSR wiki

If there is anything else worth mentioning let me know.




Edit: I`ll just update this as things move along.

Under construction

I was thinking about making a blog for a while now, and the whole G+ exodus have rattled a lot of folks, people are scrambling like rats from a sinking ship. There have been some traction with MeWe, which is abominable name, a mewling sound of a dying thing. But its better then stuck on a sinking ship. Let`s see how this all works out.

Meanwhile, this seams like a good time to jump the shark, sinking ship pun intended, and make a blog, I`ll post some stuff to help in the great exodus.

Here begins the harrowing tale of survival in G+ Apocalypse (Edit. Couldn`t resist adding this )
And if blogger goes down with G+, well poop.