The Bogeywoman's Cave

Quake, released in 1996 by Id software, was the spiritual successor to Doom and Doom 2. In it, the player controls the Ranger, a space marine who is sent through various slipgates (portals) into other realms to acquire runes, so that he can slay the mysterious entity known as Quake. In his travels, the Ranger fights his way through gothic castles, prehuman cities, futuristic research facilities, dungeons, and eventually finds himself in the lair of the being whose codename is Quake; Shub-Niggurath. It was a weird game, but very fun, light on plot but heavy on atmosphere, with an ambient soundtrack by Trent Reznor providing an eerie mood to the game. An interesting feature of the game was that one could tackle its realms in any order they like, all of the portals that the Ranger had to travel through in his quest are open at the beginning of the game. Not quite a sandbox, but more open than games at the time. In any event, it had a fun little collection of critters to blow into ch...

You hear scuffling and a metallic-sounding wail from behind you. Your comrade grunts, moving as quickly as he can with a shattered left leg. Suddenly, he trips, falling to the floor with a thud. He calls out to you to help him up, to save him from them, and you glance behind you. Dozens of them emerge from the darkness, their glassy eyes and unnaturally smooth skin reflecting eerily in the light of your torch. Before you can let out a scream, they are upon your fallen friend, battering him with their closed, chubby fists until he is nothing more than a pile of bloody flesh. You try to run, but one of them shrieks so loud that you drop your torch involuntarily and fall to the ground, clutching your bleeding ears. In the cacophony, one thought enters your mind; you never want to see a baby ever again. Long ago, there was a wizard. This wizard desired a child, but unfortunately he was impotent due to years of meddling with strange chemicals. It was clear that no conventional method of...

For cultural reasons, most people in the Holy Empire find insects, arachnids, and other "bugs" disgusting and filthy, and an irrational fear of such creatures is not uncommon. However, some have genuine reason to fear the clattering chitin and sharp mandibles of vermin; those who have had experience with the demon goddess Scolendra. In the Hell that Scolendra hails from, vermin dominate the world, and mammals, reptiles, and birds are crushed underfoot by monstrous bugs of unnatural size and ferocity. Her influence leads to the mutation of otherwise normal sized vermin, resulting in enormous mutants that hunger for the flesh of vertebrates. Those who worship Scolendra believe that vermin are the true inheritors of Urth, and that humanity is not fit to walk the world. They pray and make blood sacrifices to their cruel goddess, hoping to be blessed with mutations that bring them closer to the creatures they revere. In her home plane, Scolendra takes the form of an enormous...

Woodwose HD 1 AC light (12) ATK 1 club DMG 1d6 HDE 1 Woodwose are what happens when humans or demi-humans are kidnapped by faeries. Through eldritch rituals, the humans become bestial and hirsute, growing sharp teeth, and occasionally even small horns. These creatures are sometimes used by the faerie folk as slaves, similar to how the goblins were used before they escaped their bondage, but sometimes they are simply released into the woods. Woodwose are sometimes called beast-folk by commoners, and few know that they were once human beings. Changelings HD 4 AC medium (14) ATK 1 claw DMG 2d6 HDE 6 Changelings are malicious faeries that can take the form of any humanoid being they touch. This process occurs over the course of 1d6 rounds. In their natural form, changelings appear as chitinous, stunted humanoids with sharp teeth and sharper claws. They typically come in the night, abducting or killing their victims while they sleep, and then taking their place. Changeling...

(Image taken from Realms of Crawling Chaos by Goblinoid Games) Its that time again! Its time for me to update my homebrew system!! Link is here Brief summary of what has changed: Rogues are overhauled because the d6 based skill system was too limiting in my opinion, and also made it hard for members of other classes to have anything in the rules pointing towards what to do when a non-combat challenge happened. Instead of a cumbersome system for using a d18 or a d20, instead the rules now only reference a d20, but supply advice for simulating a d20 with d6s as well as other methods. Minor tweaks and additions, including an alternate stat generation system. ALSO I MADE MY OWN PERSONAL LITTLE MONSTER MANUAL THINGY (Image unrelated but Holy Shit !!! Taken from the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide) A while back I wrote a post about 6 occult tomes , including the Bestiarum Monstrorum, an incomplete manuscript written by a now-dead monster hunter. In the spirit o...

It began after you sliced your finger by accident. You were in the attic, and had bumped into a pile of boxes, causing an old model ship in a bottle to fall to the floor, shattering its container. Cursing your clumsiness, you leaned down to clean up the shards, noticing for the first time the strange magic circle carved into the attic's floor. Distracted, you got a nasty cut on your index finger, causing the blood to flow like a waterfall of crimson. Nothing has been the same since then. The Blood Goblin HP 48 (4 per every hit die the player characters possess in total) AC medium ATK 2 claws (+4 to hit) DMG 1d6+2 Special: The goblin can appear anywhere where there is spilt blood. If even a drop of blood falls to the ground or splashes on to the wall, it is possible for the goblin to teleport to that spot, absorbing the blood as it does so. The Blood Goblin is a demonic entity that feeds on the blood of humans. Every year, it must drink the blood of at least 10 individu...

[All images are taken from Wikipedia, and please note that these are not necessarily biologically accurate.] Giant Black Widow Spider HD 3 AC medium ATK 1 bite DMG 1d6 + save or take additional 3d6 damage HDE 4 Giant black widows lurk in the dark places of dungeons, spinning sticky webs throughout their layers. Anyone fighting in these webs take a -1 penalty to attack rolls due to getting caught on threads. They are ambush predators, and are unlikely to attack large groups of heavily armed adventurers, preferring to attack stragglers. The venom of giant black widows is valued by assassins. Giant black widows are around twice the size of a human being. Giant Jumping Spider HD 2 AC medium ATK 1 bite DMG 1d6 HDE 2 Unlike their black widow cousins, giant jumping spiders are active hunters, moving quickly through the halls of dungeons in packs. As their name suggests, they can jump very far, allowing them to close gaps rapidly. They have large, complex eyes, allowing th...

A few months back I posted about the origins of various monsters in my home setting . For ghosts I gave the following: Ghosts are the psychic imprints of the dead, the personalities and consciousnesses of creatures the deceased given an incorporeal form and magical abilities. Some believe that only certain people possess the psychic capability become ghosts after death, while others believe that anyone who dies with enough emotional energy can come back as a spirit. Still others believe that ghosts are not human at all, and are simply demons hijacking the psychic energies of a deceased person to manifest themselves on earth. But what traits do ghosts have, really? I absolutely don't agree with D&D's traditional interpretation of ghosts, as 10 HD powerhouses that are most easily able to be slain by phasing into the ethereal plane, and whose principal attack either takes away agency from a player ( magic jar ) or has a neat effect but no real explanation as to what it doe...

(Kurt Barlow from the 1979 adaptation of Salem's Lot ) During the American revolutionary war, something inhuman scourged the countryside of New England, taking advantage of the chaos to do some killing of its own. Bodies were found, drained of blood, floating through the rivers of Massachusets, Conneticut, and Rhode Island. At first, the killings went unnoticed, but after the war ended, people began to notice the strange murders. A small cabal of wizards, sorcerers, and other occultists deduced that the killer must be something other than a human being, and tracked down the monster to its lair in the hills, finding that the vampire was one Zachariah Clement, a merchant who had gone missing some 10 years prior. During the ensuing battle, the occultists were unable to kill the unholy creature, which slew half of their party. However, they were able to seal the monster in a well in the basement of the abandoned farm-house it lived in. Zachariah remained imprisoned there for over ...

For those of you who don't know the rich backstory of the Doom franchise, let me catch you up on some of the lore; There are demons You have guns Bullets + Demons = Dead Demons Repeat The main gameplay loop of doom is as follows; Arrive at a level Try to find a way to the next level Find keys, avoid traps, and kill monsters to successfully reach the next level to continue the game Does this sound familiar? It seems awfully close to a standard dungeon crawl, minus the treasure of course. "Treasure" in Doom is mostly ammunition, health kits, armor, and power-ups. In addition, there is no gaining levels, and you can respawn at the start of a level when you die. But at its core, Doom has the makings of a megadungeon game. Lets take a look at one of the maps for Doom This is The Hangar, the first level of the game. Its a little hard to read what is there, just from the map to the untrained eye, but it contains 2 traps (pools of acid), 3 secret d...

"If you are not very careful  Your possessions will possess you TV taught me how to feel Now real life has no appeal  It has no appeal  It has no appeal  It has no appeal  It has no appeal  It has no appeal  I know exactly what I want and who I want to be  I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine  I'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy  Oh, oh no, oh no, oh no"  -"Oh No", by Marina and the Diamonds Goons with probes inserted into their pleasure centers; wired up so when they kill someone, they get paroxysms of ecstasy. In essence, customized serial killers. - Quake Instruction Manual  It stands at around 8 feet tall, with muscles grown unnaturally large due to steroid use. Metal cords like ropes of steel stick out of the thing's flesh. Covering its eyes is a bulky VR headset, with a small camera mounted above. The ears are covered by cubes of black pl...

NOTE: The lore of the monsters, as described by me, is modified to be more setting neutral, and is not indicative of the actual backstory of these creatures in Dark Souls 3. All images are taken from the Dark Souls 3 and Dark Souls Fandom wikis. Man Grub HD 1 AC unarmored ATK 1 scratch DMG 1d3 HDE 1 There are some who obsess over their every imperfection until the very sight of their face drives them to rage. Some of these few become so desperate as to require rebirth, engaging in foul rituals to change their forms and be, quite literally, born again from the womb of a witch. However, this process sometimes goes wrong, and the resulting creatures are hideous and in constant pain. Ghru HD 2 AC unarmored or by armor worn ATK 2 claws or 1 weapon DMG 1d3 each or by weapon HDE 3 Special: Due to their corrupted and poisonous nature, any attack by a Ghru requires the victim to make a saving throw or take an additional 1d3 damage per attack. They say they were men, once, b...

I recently rewatched the excellent Stuart Gordon film Re-Animator  (a loose adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "Herbert West - Reanimator"), and I immediately found myself wanting to write up the re-animation solution from the film as an item for OSR games. So here it is! (Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West) West's Reagent The re-animation solution created by Dr. Herbert West has a consistency similar to milk, and glows bright green. It is typically found in small, plastic or glass containers, holding 1d6 doses each. When injected into living tissue, it revitalizes and rejuvenates the user, causing them to regain 1d6+1 hit points and not need to sleep or eat for 24 hours. However, it is highly addictive, and after a week of consistent use, one must make a saving throw each day they do not take the reagent or take 1d3 damage and a -2 penalty to attack rolls for the day. This withdrawal lasts 1d3 weeks. However, the primary effect of the drug occurs when injected into co...

A hunched over, bearded figure in a brown cloak stumbles towards you in the dark, pitiful and weak looking. You sigh, wishing not to attack such a humble creature. He probably is just an old beggar, lost and cold. If you had your way, you'd let him into your master's house, but your orders are specific. "Halt!", you shout, "Turn back please, Master Smith is not accepting visitors at the moment". At this, the cloaked man stops his stumbling, and looks up at you. Though you can't see his face, you feel fear, as though the ragged old man in front of you is gazing into your very soul. Then, before your eyes, he begins to change.  He, no, it, begins to stand up, unfolding from its hunched position. As it straightens, the thing you once thought was only 5 feet tall at the most now stands nearly 7 feet in height. The worn, brown cloth gives way to hideous, wet looking black leather. The gray beard morphs into a mass of writhing, purple tendrils, dripping ...

Matango (also known as Attack of the Mushroom People), is a surprisingly good 1960s toho film that is loosely based on William H. Hodgson's "The Voice in the Night" (which, if you haven't read it, is also extremely good). In the film, a group of luckless vacationers are stranded on an island covered in mushrooms, and soon find that eating the fungus takes over your mind and eventually your body, until you become a horrifying humanoid mass of mushrooms! Placing some Matango fungus in your dungeon is a surefire way to cause fungal shenanigans, especially if the party is running low on food... Stage 1 Infection After consuming a portion of Matango fungus, one must make a saving throw versus poison. If they fail, they have entered Stage 1 of Matango infection. They will now encourage anyone they have contact with to consume the mushrooms as well, claiming that they are delicious and the best thing they've ever eaten. In addition, they are now considered to be ...