The Bogeywoman's Cave

Hey so you know how I made the 30 Minute Dungeon thing that blew up for a while? Well I've been working a little on refining it. For those of you who may be new to the blog, the 30 Minute Dungeon method is something I came up with where you set a timer for 30 minutes and make a 10 room dungeon, using the following checklist for what must be included: 3 Empty Rooms 3 Combat Encounters 2 Traps 1 NPC 1 Special/Weird Thing It took off and I compiled a collection of the dungeons I made, selling them in a pdf which got a justifiably mixed review by Skerples of Coins and Scrolls fame. A big problem I had with the formula is I kept being repetitive with how I designed the dungeons and how I would sometimes waste time getting stuck not knowing what to do for rooms. So I decided to come up with some prompts that help me come up with ideas for rooms without being too specific, ultimately coming up with 6 prompts for each room type, therefore allowing me to roll a d6 to randomly de...

Hey, sorry for not posting in so long, things have been busy with college and work. Anyway, I have been working on revising JABOM (my house rules), ad came up with this potential new version of the priest/cleric class. It isn't playtested, but I thought I'd let y'all know how its turning out. Also featuring bad MSpaint art, because why not!! Miracle Worker You are a holy person, following strict rules of your faith to the letter. Through this piety and reverence of the divine, you are able to create miracles. Level HP Attack Bonus Special Abilities 1 6+CON mod +0 Piety, Miracles 2 Add 1d6+CON mod +1 +1 Magic Point, New Spell 3 Add 1d6+CON mod +1 +1 Magic Point, New Spell 4 Add 1d6+CON mod +2 +1 Magic Point, New Spell 5 ...

I'm not an artist, at least not a visual one, though I often wish I was. I enjoy doodling in MSpaint a lot, it helps pass the time and makes me happy, but nothing I make in there is really truly "art". So the other day I thought, "Screw it, just doodle 5 monsters from the AD&D monster manual in MSpaint and put it on your blog. It isn't an art gallery, its a place for me to express myself and goof off", and so I did. And I realized that I bet a lot of the rest of the blogosphere is similar, not having too much art experience and wanting to create something, but not really feeling competent in their abilities and expressing themselves. So here's a blogging challenge or whatever; crack open a monster manual or bestiary and just doodle a couple of the monsters there in MSpaint. This is just for funsies, you can spend as little or as much time as you want, go hogwild! To kick things off, here are 5 of my MSpaint monsters! I might do more of this, I mig...

The History of the Institute The Volkov Institute is a top secret international organization founded in the early 20th century to investigate, contain, and eliminate supernatural phenomena. It is named after the little known scientist, Dr. Ivan Volkov, a Russian immigrant to England, who first conclusively proved the existence of other planes of existence in 1887, through a device later called the Volkov Resonator. The first test run went fine, with Volkov and his machine disappearing and reappearing a few minutes later with a violet glow. Volkov claimed to have been in a supernaturally beautiful meadow, full of flowers with "alien colors" and wonderful scents. A few months later, Volkov presented his invention to the Royal Society, and had prepared a demonstration. He did not survive. (From 1986's From Beyond ) Dr. Volkov, upon describing what his invention did, was met with disbelief and mockery. He had anticipated this, and so asked for a volunteer from the audi...

Hi I haven't posted in well over a month, anyway here is a city that is perfect for casual dungeon crawl games. This is part of a series of posts called Word Vomit, where I basically throw something together and only lightly edit it, to try and combat my writer's block. Dungeon City This place doesn't seem so much like it was built as it was grown, with chaotic and twisted spires extending up high into the sky, held up by makeshift supports and bridges connecting various buildings.  Those who are rich live in the upper levels of the city, high above the ground, above the filth and squalor below. The city makes its income thanks to the Ultradungeon, a huge network of millions of tunnels and rooms that extends for miles underneath the city. Strangely, it seems to constantly shifting and evolving, growing just as the city seems to have, and within its depths are countless treasures, both monetary and enchanted. Through this, the city stays afloat, and many cargo ships l...

What if D&D was a ridiculously over-the-top action movie/video game? This hack/setting is basically a dumb experiment with that concept. Don't take this setting seriously, its not meant to be genuinely interesting or deep or anything, play up the ridiculousness and absurdity. Everything should be as over-the-top and gonzo as possible. The action genre is silly. The world as we knew it ended a couple decades ago. Nobody knows for sure what happened, everything was so fast. Now blood-soaked demons, cannibalistic mutants, berserk robots, and merciless aliens prowl the landscape, haunting the ruins of humanity's own hubris. This is Hell on Earth, and you're damned. But there is a glimmer of hope. There are rumors of a machine that can end you back to the past, to stop the apocalypse before it happened, but the road to this device is long and dangerous. To reach the time machine and save humanity, you must cross the REALMS OF GIBBITUDE!!! (From Pinterest, let me know ...

I don't really like how traditional D&D dragons work. They don't seem to give off a coherent feeling to me, they don't seem to have a proper soul if you will. This could just be me, but they just feel so boring. Maybe its the huge number of kinds of dragons that exist that makes them so boring to me, or maybe its the fact that they have a high level of intelligence and then do basically nothing but lie around in caves all day or eat a few peasants. It just doesn't sit quite well with me. When I think of my idealized dragon, these are kind of what they look like; (From Dragonslayer) (These two are unknown sources, please let me know if you know who the artists are so I can credit them) I don't like the more mystical side of dragons, with spell-casting and shape shifting and magic and stuff like that. When a dragon is around things should be messed up. Its not natural at all, it destroys entire ecosystems and razes villages to the ground, and it doe...

Beholders suck, they're stupid, this is dumb. Look at this stat block, just look at it. There isn't a proper, easy to roll hit dice number, they give you  range of 45-75. How the hell am I supposed to generate that?? 44+1d30?? And the armor class, this is just ridiculous, it has 3 different ACs. Judging by the description, you have to roll percentile dice to determine where you hit it before you can roll to attack just so you can figure out what armor class you're rolling against. And how does it attack? Well it has a bite attack for 2d4 damage, and generally then you have to roll 1d4 to determine how many magical attacks it gets, through which it is implied you have to roll a d10 that many times to determine what different magical attacks it uses. Oh, and also it has an anti-magic ray, because screw you if you're a magic-user and you wanted to have a fun time. Also I'm just realizing you have to keep INDIVIDUAL TRACK OF ALL 10 EYE STALKS' HP???? OF WH...

I have been on a roll with d66 tables recently, and I know its getting boring fast, but have one more for your trouble, this one I actually have used in an earlier form for my solo game (and I do need to catch up on play reports and post those soon). You could also use this table to generate names for individual levels of a megadungeon, which I'm certain would turn into a very odd place indeed. D66 Place Descriptor Noun 11 Abattoir Tenebrous Delights 12 Oubliette Prehuman Death 13 Charnel House Unearthly Dead 14 Manor Demoniac Torment 15 Estate Eldritch Antiquity 16 Tower Hellish Terror 21 Cathedral Impossible Horror 22 Sewers Rotten Doom 23 Tunnels Eternal Monstrosity 24 Cave...

(Art by Jeremy Jarvis for 3.5e D&D) I was originally gonna call this post Demonic God Re Generator but then I was worried people would be confused and not click on it. Anyway a while back I made a random demonic god generator with 20736 possible combinations, and this expanded version should have 1679616 possible combinations. Have fun! D66 Epithet Domain Form Cult Markings 11 Bringer Destruction A human Members of the cult take on some of the features of their deity 12 Eater Monsters A human with animal-like features All members are undead, walking rotting corpses 13 Scholar Nature A worm/serpent Cult is only formed from animals, no humans 14 Harbinger Caves A dragon Can only consume human flesh and blood 15 Priest The Void A being of pure energy All members are monsters 16 Slayer De...