Adventure Design, Storytelling, Reflections

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  • Liminal Horror, at the Shelterwood Inn

    Last night I played Liminal Horror for the first time, opting to run the starting scenario Stopover at the Shelterwood Inn for 3 of my friends. Generally, it went pretty well and after so many years of running Into the Odd-likes, the rules were pretty easy to wrap my head around.

    *I only read the rules once before playing: it seems to me like the main difference was the way the game handles critical damage. In Liminal Horror, critical damage causes wounds that are rolled for on a table (like in Mothership). Damage against a target’s WIL–in this game called CTRL–is referred to as stress and if a PC suffers critical damage from stress they roll on a fallout table and suffer a thematic effect. I was impressed to see that the starting adventure included its own fallout table unique to this scenario, which is something I hope is included in every Liminal Horror adventure.

    All of that is to say that like in Mothership, Liminal Horror PCs are normal people who might panic and break down. This is handled really eloquently with the bones of Into the Odd and, in my opinion, is far superior to the way it’s handled in Mothership.

    Art by Goblin Archives

    I ran the adventure with very little prep, even by my own standards. Specifically, I read the adventure for the first time the morning of my session and then I skimmed it once more about 15 minutes before we played. I didn’t take any notes during my prep; the adventure is so well-formatted I’m not sure what I would have even written if I had.

    I did spend about 30 minutes drawing a more printable map, though.

    Art by Goblin Archives

    I loved the pixel art one included in the adventure, but when I tried to print it with my black and white printer it turned into a formless blob. Like I’ve said before–drawing the map helps me meditate on how I will present the adventure to the players. But still, I made a crucial mistake that cut a lot of the tension from my session…

    The mistake? I made the undercover agents too approachable, when they should have been a deadly threat. A shoot-first, ask questions later kind of threat. Think, the Working Joes in Alien: Isolation.

    *** I’m about to spoil the adventure below but I think if you’re planning on running the adventure, it’s worth learning from my mistake.

    So my players had just entered the A-frame lobby of the Shelterwood Inn. They found the door locked, and one of the undercover agents lets them in. He’s posing as the motel owner, but he’s actually an agent of the bureau here to clean up some Stephen King shit that’s going sideways in the basement. The actual owners of the motel are mold-people now, kind of like in Resident Evil 7, lurking in the dank waters of the cistern below the motel’s basement.

    Art by Goblin Archives

    So the man posing as the owner, Otis, locks the PCs in the Honeymoon Suite. Presumably to keep them out of harm’s way. They quickly broke out and snuck around to the back of the motel. After exploring for a while, discovering Otis is lying about being the owner, and seeing the so-called Sheriff acting really shady, they eavesdrop on a conversation between Otis and Claire.

    Art by Goblin Archives

    This is my missed opportunity: Otis tells Claire that he locked the PCs away, and he insists on making them a meal because he can’t let them go hungry. Nice guy. That was my mistake.

    The adventure directed me to have him lock up the PCs, and that’s a great idea, but how Claire should have responded is this: “Otis, you were supposed to kill them. This is why they shouldn’t send the PR team into the field…” and give explicit orders to kill the PCs on site.

    That would be scarier, and consistent with a clandestine agency bent on keeping more people from turning into mold.

    Art by Goblin Archives

    Once my players caught on to the idea that there was a bigger horror, they convinced the surviving undercover agents to team up with them and torch the big bad–Mr. Roosevelt–with Molotovs and shotgun blasts.

    In the end, we had a great session. My players loved the highway setting–truly liminal, like the game promises, and the thrill of playing regular people in a ttrpg is really thrilling for most of my players.

  • Public Access, and why you might skip it

    Art by the Gauntlet

    I want to love this game, but there are three things I wish I knew before starting a short campaign–and one reason I was glad when it was over.

    The tldr is this: I have mixed feelings about Public Access, I give 6.5 Odyssey Tapes out of 10. And if Public Access looks cool to you, you should absolutely run it–especially if you’re a new GM or running your first multi-session campaign. If you’re an experienced GM with an established flow and prep style, you might struggle with its rigidity and its eventual dissolve into tonal whiplash.

    1. It’s too much paperwork.

    I spent too much game time flipping through notes. Because Carved from Brindlewood clues are established reactively during play, completed mysteries still held crucial narrative threads for future sessions. Running this from folded papers and napkin notes quickly became a mess, and I repeatedly missed roleplay beats while hunting for buried, player-generated facts.

    2. It’s not actually rules-light.

    Between inventory, Side Character perks, past adventure rewards, Conditions, and Keys, players have a surprisingly large ledger to track. During tense moments, I found myself breaking character to nudge players to utilize all their abstract mechanical resources.

    3. The GM doesn’t get to roll.

    I missed running characters with set drives and concrete failure conditions. Because the game relies so heavily on improv-driven truth, even an NPC’s core nature is fluid until a clue or roll locks it in. I found myself gravitating toward hazards like Darryl Rodenbecker over Side Characters simply because hazards possessed stable, fully realized definitions.

    All that Being Said…

    These design choices are all undeniably intentional. The system gets you 85% of the way to a unique aesthetic with minimal traditional prep. So if you love constructing conspiracy boards and cross-referenced journals, you’ll probably adore it. And for first-time GMs Carved from Brindlewood guidance belongs on the required reading list alongside the Mothership Warden’s Operations Manual.

    Art by the Gauntlet

    Why I’m Glad It’s Over

    I ran Public Access for 10 Sessions. As our campaign progressed, each session yielded less joy for me than the last. Reading this review by Fail Forward helped me identify the source of my dissatisfaction: tonal whiplash. Fail Forward notes that the overarching narrative is “a romp to a degree that no other part of the game is. It’s a slasher at best, and a comedy action-flick in a Spirit Halloween at worst”–and my table proved that right.

    In Session 3, as my players were searching for the Black Leaf Circle, a failed check brought one if its members Godpanther through a staticky, dimensional door. I asked Timothy’s player to make a Day Move to avoid being overpowered by the cultist. Timothy invoked his wallet-chain for advantage, whipped Godpanther across the face, and sent the sorcerer-cultist fleeing in pain. It had an awkward, Coen Brothers/Barry violence to it that was fun in isolation, but it completely drained the cult of its cosmic threat going into future encounters. Later, when two latchkey kids literally stomped the amusement park anomaly from Starlight Kingdom to death, my ability to maintain analog horror-atmospheric tension collapsed entirely.

    Like Fail Forward put it: “it’s the Mystery Gang tripping up an eldritch abomination with a wet bar of soap.”

    Nagging Thoughts

    All of this leaves me with more questions about the medium:

    • Can pure horror ever survive player agency in TTRPGs, or is camp inevitable? When players have strong mechanical tools to fight back or manipulate narrative reality, tension naturally degrades into action-comedy.
    • High-impact moves vs. Slow-burn dread. Analog horror relies on unexplainable, lingering dread. But PBTA engine design rewards high-impact choices and immediate resolution–two mechanics that actively undermine slow-burn fear.
    • Designed to end. I deeply respect that Public Access has a finite campaign arc. Too many games assume infinite modular play. I only wish the game’s finale was designed with the same eerie restraint as its opening act.

    Lessons I’m Stealing

    Despite my bouncing off its rigid campaign structure, Public Access left me with three brilliant design ideas I plan to steal for my next campaign. If anything, playing it reignited my excitement for emergent, serialized play.

    1. Have players define the consequence before they roll.

    This is tailor-made for high-stakes games like Mothership or Into the Odd, where rolling is a desperate last resort or a save against guaranteed harm. Pitching compelling, fail-forward complications on the fly is mentally exhausting for a GM. Asking players “What goes wrong if this fails?” before the dice hit the table completely shifts that cognitive load. If their proposed consequence feels too tame for you, you can always “yes, and…” it to dial up the danger but at least they’ve gotten your gears turning.

    2. Leave structural gaps in your prep for player theorycrafting.

    Leaving mysteries unresolved and incorporating player theories into the lore is S-tier advice that many GMs admire but struggle to practice without a net. Certainly that was the case for me. While the Carved from Brindlewood framework ultimately felt too rigid for my GMing style, its core principle is invaluable: leaving explicit blank spaces in your campaign prep forces the spotlight to remain firmly on the players’ observations and hypotheses.

    3. Reserve two-thirds of session time for predictable, player-driven play.

    The structural contrast between Day and Night phases creates a fantastic gameplay rhythm. During the Day, players drive the action, their plans generally succeed, and they explore their own personal agendas without constant threat. At Night, the dark forces retaliate and failure carries sharp teeth. You don’t need a rigid phase set up to accomplish this. For example:

    • Dungeon Crawls: Safe town prep and wilderness travel serve as the “Day,” while deep dungeon delves become the high-stress “Night.”
    • Sci-Fi Horror / Mothership: Routine maintenance, cargo runs, and shore leave represent the predictable “Day” before things inevitably collapse into horror.

    Giving players a generous, reliable window of low-threat agency makes the eventual turn to high-stakes danger hit much harder, and allows them to express a lot of agency.

  • A Jam packed summer

    Woof. I’m tired. I’ve been rating entries for the Appendix N Jam like a dog.

    Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of my favorites so far:

    Art by Pietro Longhi

    You might have noticed that most of my favorites are among the best-looking adventures posted. Real 5-star visual designers. Does that make me shallow? Illiterate? Maybe.

    But aren’t visuals also design? And are we not designers first?

    It’s been a little disorienting looking at so many adventures presented in so many different ways. Each one a puzzle box until the moment its designer’s intent reveals itself like so many plump little pearls rising from a bed of muck. Busy pages, low contrast, baffling color choices. Yuck.

    It’s like some designers treat the single page of a jam like an exam cheat sheet: cramming every line from the textbook onto every square centimeter.

    My guy, it has to be legible.

    Why are so many indie adventures so hard to look at?

    I wasn’t really planning on making anything else this summer, I’ve been busy enough finishing my campaign of Public Access (speaking of baffling decisions: why didn’t I read that campaign before committing to run it? But, more on that in another post…) and trying to make the most of the very short summers in my corner of the realm. But, when RedMageGM announced he was hosting a Mystic Wood OSR Adventure Jam based on the Lost Woods/Mirkwood from the Legend of Zelda/the Hobbit I knew I had to join the jam. I’ve already designed a randomized open-air dungeon; I knew I could make something even better by leaning into the fairytale/folklore vibes for this jam. The idea came basically fully formed.

    I knew from the hop I wanted to evoke an old Gameboy vibe. I remembered that in a live stream Chris McDowall referred to Alec Sorensen’s art as “Gameboy colours” so I looked at the botanical borders on each page of Mythic Bastionland for the basis of my palette.

    After drawing the Campsite and Spirit Village, the style guide was locked in, leaving me free to simply draw and imagine what became of this once-great kingdom. The narrative grew naturally from the art.

    I’ve often said that visuals lead my design process, but it actually runs deeper than that. Visuals don’t arrive fully formed but they emerge through a kind of meditation. Spending hours in a state of flow over a single drawing allows ideas to simmer until they feel as grounded and genuine as real-world memories. Drawing the world doesn’t just illustrate it; it makes it real. And once a place becomes real, designing it feels entirely intuitive.

    The adventure is free on itch.io, you can check it out right here. Even if the adventure itself has no appeal to you, I’m sure these 20 map tiles could be arranged into a fun open-air dungeon of your own making.

  • Embrace Cringe

    You know what’s cringe? Falling in love. Telling your friends that you value them. Getting earnestly excited about your hobbies. Being vulnerable with others.

    You know what else is cringe? Asking acquaintances in your life to play ttrpgs with you, and getting over the fear of mixing different groups of people in your life over a shared hobby.

    It’s pretty cringe to go up to someone and ask them what kind of fiction they like, to talk to them about their favourite books and music and movies in an earnest, curious way and then invite them to try a social, collaborative storytelling game. You might have to explain that these games often lean into pulpy, action-movie stakes. It’s just an excuse to solve wild problems we’d never encounter at our day jobs. Plus, you get to do funny voices–you don’t have to, but you can if you want to (I do when I’m inspired to).

    You get to practice being a hero, it’s pretty cringe.

    Art by Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella, Jacques Stella

    If you’re looking for players, you need to ask the people that you know and meet them where they’re at. A lot of them might surprise you. I play regularly thanks to advice from articles like the open table manifest by the Alexandrian.

    It’s pretty cringe to be worried about how you look if you’re doing what you love.

  • Warriors of the Bleached Basin

    My submission to the Appx. N Jam 2026 is now live on itch.io, you can check it out right here. The adventure turned out differently from my initial thoughts once I got to the art phase of the project. I thought it could be a fun exercise to compare how my ideas translated to the page, and dig into why I made the choices that I did.

    I was limited to four A5 pages (in other words, both sides of a single, letter-sized piece of paper), so let’s take a look at each page in order.

    Cover Page

    I knew I wanted a cover page, despite it occupying 25% of the available space. I originally thought I would draw one of the industrialists from Timber Town wielding a fire whipper and keeping a couple of reptilian warriors at bay, but none of those ideas made it into the final draft and when I started diving into public domain illustrations of corals, I fell in love with the alien vibe Philip Henry Gosse’s 1856 illustrations brought to the cover. The font and color contrast helps sell the science-fantasy vibes without many words.

    But there are still words. I wrote previously about the good use of verbs in the Cairn adventure, In a Petal Unlimited, so I wanted to make sure my cover page also provided a clear hook: find the treasure.

    I had wanted to offer six hooks as an opportunity to expand the worldbuilding, but decided not to; I’d prefer more of my precious word count be spent on describing the setting and its inhabitants knowing that an inspired GM could find other implied hooks. I’m a big fan of iceberg theory.

    Dungeon Key

    Originally, I thought the entire adventure would be a wilderness crawl, but after pushing my ideas into the proverbial brown-bag of the back of my mind to let them ripen, I decided that a tight, five-room dungeon could offer a lot of narrative in a limited amount of words.

    I had always planned on there being a couple of adventure locations on the map, but I combined the ancient lighthouse and warriors’ temple ideas into a single location and cut anything that didn’t add to the story.

    I don’t usually add “if this, then that” type text to my adventures, but since this one is designed to be a one-shot I thought it would be fun to add some world-changing stakes. The Ritual also ties in Yager-yugh from the final page, and offers a potential moral dilemma for outsider player characters not endeared to Timber Town.

    Maybe it’s just me, but I find the Sea Witch much more sympathetic than the folks of Timber Town given our real-world man-made ecological apocalypse is already well underway.

    Dungeon

    My favourite thing about isometric dungeon maps, besides their dollhouse-like vibes, is the way they communicate verticality. I really wanted to lean into that with this statue trap, set up by the Warriors to get the jump on anyone from Timber Town (or other nosy explorers) looking to rob the temple or interrupt the ritual.

    The isometric perspective also makes it very clear how all of the rooms connect, which is important when my word-count is so limited. I didn’t have to spend any time describing how a fall from 3 leads straight through 4 to 5; it’s clear in the visual design.

    Back Cover

    This is the first page I finished and it’s actually the closest to my original post. It was while working on the drawing of the Bleached Basin that many of my ideas calcified, while the rest fell away like brittle, grasping fingers of bleached coral. For me, I discovered, the visuals lead. Without the pressure to put my ideas into words, and with hours ahead of me to draw, think, refine, and draw again, the entire setting *develops* in my mind like a photograph darkening to reveal itself.

    I’m most proud of this final page, really, because it communicates so much about the harsh reality of living in this place with very few words.

    Conclusion

    I’m really happy with how this adventure came out, and I’m grateful to the Appx. N Jam judges for taking a look at it. This isn’t something I would have come up with if it weren’t for the imaginative prompt I was provided with and all of the awesome inspiration I was filled with looking at last year’s submissions.

  • I can’t stop thinking about Darkon…

    One of my favourite things about Ravenloft is its wacky worldbuilding: each Domain of Dread is a mind-prison tailored by mysterious Dark Powers to eternally torture its Darklord. Made of shadowstuff and the Darklord’s own memories, these domains are unreal yet populated by very real, trapped souls.

    The most famous Darklord is Count Strahd, imprisoned in Barovia and tortured by repeated reincarnations of his beloved Tatyana. The campaign’s most horrifying reveal is that this loop repeats endlessly just to punish Strahd, regardless of the collateral damage. You are, effectively, meaningless in a cosmic struggle between an asshole and an even bigger asshole.

    Art by Wizards of the Coast

    Darkon stands out among the domains in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft (2021) because it is on the brink of destruction. Before your campaign in Darkon even begins, the Darklord–the Lich King Azalin Rex–has already won. He escaped.

    During the Hour of Ascension, Azalin vanished, leaving Darkon to dissolve into the mists. Without a Darklord to punish, the Dark Powers have no use for the domain, and the Shadowfell is reabsorbing it. As the mists fracture the land, familiar people and places simply fade from memory.

    The authors write:

    “Despite facing gradual annihilation, Darkon’s living population largely ignores the threat, dismissing reports of vanished regions as rumors and fearmongering.”

    And this is why I can’t stop thinking about Darkon.

    Art by Gladys Amy Mock

    On Saturday, my city broke a 100-year temperature record. The heat, paired with 85% humidity, triggered intense nausea, headaches, and a profound sense of anxiety–and I’m a healthy 32-year-old with no respiratory conditions.

    Simultaneously, an extreme heatwave claimed over 1,300 lives across Europe. Throw in an impending energy crisis, and things start to look pretty bleak for the inhabitants of the domain we call Earth.

    Art by Émile-Antoine Bayard

    Friend-to-pedophiles and eBay billionaire Peter Thiel is planning to leave society behind for a floating, libertarian nation built for profit. Epstein-black-book-reject and son-of-an-emerald-baron Elon Musk plans to leave Earth altogether for Mars, having already become the world’s first trillionaire when SpaceX went public. Piss-bottle-enthusiast and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has expressed a similar desire to abandon the world he helped to ruin.

    While it is tempting to compare the elite billionaire class to Azalin Rex or other Darklords of Ravenloft, the reality is much more terrifying: our world is a rudderless ship drifting on the currents of capital, and no one can stop it from crashing into the rocks. The fallout of the impending climate disaster will kill more people than any historical atrocity. Despite their immense creativity, the writers at Wizards of the Coast cannot engineer a Darklord whose evil rivals the real-world systems that are set to doom us all.

    Yet, one element of their worldbuilding remains hauntingly accurate: how people respond to the inevitable end. Like the citizens of Darkon, we will be forced to watch the people, places, and traditions we love disappear first from reality, and then from our collective memories–like so many souls lost to the mists. To speak of it will be dismissed as fear-mongering and rumors.

    I guess the weather just does that.

  • Old House/Development Log 6

    Old House. The Byron family refused to move, even when the Lab came. No one knows what happened to them, or their infamous collection of antique coins.

    Art by Virginia Richards

    I wrote previously about how my adventure was inspired by Kelsey Dionne’s Cursed Scroll #1 for Shadowdark RPG. Kelsey described the Gloaming with a couple of terse, evocative sentences for each location, and left room for me and my table to make it our own.

    “509. Outlaw Camp. 30 bandits camp here led by Greaves Redthorne, an outcast Knight of St. Ydris. Greaves, a cunning liar, serves the marrow fiend Unduluk, who is only a few moons away from erupting from the marrow tree at the center of camp. Unduluk needs protection from the Knights of St. Ydris (1406) for now, and human flesh after its apotheosis. The bandits do not realize they serve as both.“

    These four sentences served as the spark for a fiery manhunt arc, none of it written explicitly in the text of the adventure. When the party set a trap for Redthorne on the bridge outside of Marin’s Hold, the only thing I knew about the guy, really, is that he’s a cunning liar.

    As Redthorne approaches the bridge to meet with my players (for plot reasons), something is off. He hasn’t seen anyone travelling to or from Marin’s Hold all day. He lets the wind wash over him, breathing in the scent of the forest. He succeeds on a WIS check (his cunning). He raises a hand, the bandits stand motionless.

    My players watch from the trees–ready to ambush–as the bandits form a tight huddle around their leader. Redthorne casts shadowdance, weaving shadow stuff into an illusory version of himself who walks confidently onto the bridge with more than half of the bandits (his deception, and his willingness to sacrifice the bandits).

    My players spring their trap. Their archer/fighter fires a flaming arrow at the payload of explosives strapped under the fragile bridge. All of the bandits are killed in the explosion, torn apart and scattered with the bricks into the murky river below, but Redthorne dissolves into shadow. He steps toward the flame, ready to fight like a demon to his bitter end.

    It was an epic conclusion to a great arc, and while none of it was spelled out for me by Kelsey, I feel like all of it was consistent with her design, her writing, and her worldbuilding.

    Page 11 of my adventure lists 6 treasure sites with one sentence descriptions for each, naming a treasure and hinting at a danger within. In an earlier blog post, I had a lot of fun expanding on the Lakeside Lodge and ended up with a Shining-esque creepy mansion full of fish ghosts.

    Let’s do that again, only this time for the Old House. Maybe we can answer some questions about the eponymous Byron Family and their so-called infamous antique coins.

    Map of the Old House

    As per usual, I go to Dyson Logos. Obviously, I love drawing maps, but I’m not a machine, I can never draw all the maps I need. And I want to play tonight.

    I like this map and its counterpart. The Byron’s have been gone for over fifty years and the Old House was built in a *coastal vulnerability zone* (in other words, it’s been battered by the elements). Here we can see that only the brick elements remain and a lot of the wood/plaster/ceramic has fallen away. A small wooden shack on the west side of the mansions’ ruins is home to Granny Byron.

    Granny Byron HP 8
    Driven to hold onto her antique coins forever and ever and ever.
    STR 18
    Bite (d10), false teach shatter on Critical Damage (d6 Blast)
    Adapted. Granny Byron has held onto these coins for a long, long time. She can perform any mundane action without the use of her hands.

    Antique Coins. Just a normal box of antique coins. To the right collector in Bastion, easily worth £1,500.

    OLD HOUSE ENCOUNTERS Roll d6

    1. Jack Byron wants you off his property. He’s tired of pesky Lab workers picking through his trash. If you know where Sophia is, he’s much more agreeable

      Jack Byron HP 6
      Driven to help his mother rest.
      Armour 1 (Breast Plate), STR 12, CHA 12
      Shotgun (d8, Bulky)

      “Those jackoffs at the Lab think they can take what they want, like city folk are so much smarter than us country folk. Wait a minute, where did you say you were from again?”

      2. Janet Byron gardening around the ruined mansion’s exterior. She’s more welcoming of guests than her husband, but flies into a rage if anyone points out the dreadful state of her home.

      Janet Byron HP 8
      Driven to redeem herself in the eyes of her mother-in-law.
      Armour 1 (Chainmail), DEX 12, CHA 12
      Rapier (d8)

      “Those antique coins are all we have left. Sophia needs to take over holding them for her grandmother, it’s her duty as her father’s eldest daughter.“

      3. Ricky Byron setting bear traps all throughout the property, hidden under the brush. He isn’t interested in the Players, unless they’re willing to share stories of their violent exploits.

      Ricky Byron HP 4
      Driven to see others in pain.
      CHA 8
      Stinky Blade (d6), DEPRIVED on Critical Damage

      “Ricky doesn’t give a shit about those coins. Ricky doesn’t give a shit about you.”

      Bear Traps. Hidden under the brush, difficult to see because of all the litter and debris. Causes d6 damage and stuck for 1 Turn.

      Art by Ohara Koson

      4. A dozen white rabbits emerge from the lowlands to the west and dash through the property toward the road to the east. One of them stops and looks at you for a moment, as if lost in thought, before reuniting with the others.

      Retter, the Original White Rabbit
      Driven to hide in plain sight.
      Armour 1 (Blue Flames), CHA 14
      Moonbeam (d10), permanently blinded on Critical Damage

      5. Four Field Agents in rubber hazmat suits scanning the Old House with strange machinery. They will encourage the Players to leave, for their own sake.

      Field Agents HP 4
      Driven to find the Original White Rabbit.
      Armour 1 (Hazmat Suit)
      Snare Pole (d8, Bulky) ensnared on Critical Damage or Concealed Pistol (d6)

      “I can’t believe you’d be here without the proper protection… I guess you people will do anything for a quick buck.”

      6. Three Ferrymen looking to steal those antique coins they heard about. One of them managed to pry the box of coins from Granny’s hands, but she’s relentless. She got them back.

      Ferryman HP 3
      Driven to find some treasure and get back to the Lighthouse.
      CHA 12
      Pistol (d6) or Switchblade (d6)

      Final Thoughts

      • So, here we have a potential standoff at the Old House. Everybody has conflicting drives, and the verticality of the map makes it a potentially interesting stand off (if it comes to that).
      • I wouldn’t describe the entire location in a lot of detail for the Players, just print a blank map and put it in front of them.
      • Print one for yourself and write directly on the map: decide where a few bear traps are, put something useful but inexpensive in the treasure chest on the upper levels. I would put one of the Coastal Oddities from Page 37 in there, if it were me.
      • The chest requires 7 antique coins be inserted into the lock-slot to open (lessening the total value of the coins to £1,200).
      • For more hazards and obstacles, don’t forget to look at “34 Good Traps” on Page 304 of Electric Bastionland. For this map, I would choose the following:
        • (6) “A column of light. When a being enters they are frozen, and an evil duplicate of them is conjured. The victim is only freed when the duplicate is killed.” Put this on on the southern altar.
        • (21) “Rope bridge primed to split in the middle when the majority of the crossing weight has passed the midpoint. The characters can grab their half of the bridge and climb back up easily enough.” The last bit of ruins connecting the upper levels.
        • (13) “Glossy, friction-less floor and spiked walls.” Seems like something Ricky Byron would do. On the top floor of the southern structure, he’s poured motor oil all over the floor and fixed sharp metal and glass to the remains of the walls. On top of that, there’s a risk of falling in the southeastern corner of the room. Ricky will try to trick the Players into going up there if he can.

    1. Vibes? Vibes.

      This month, I’m reading Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer. It’s the sequel to Borne—a novel I absolutely adore for its refusal to hold the reader’s hand. VanderMeer respects the reader; he drops a disturbing piece of worldbuilding, moves on, and trusts you to sit with the implications. But Dead Astronauts feels less like a traditional narrative and more like a fever dream. The prose is heady, the plot moves with a surreal, hallucinatory cadence, and while I love every second of it, I’m frequently left wondering if I’m too high or not high enough to really get it.

      In a novel, that kind of beautiful disorientation is part of the joy. If I lose my footing, I can slow down, re-read a passage, or parse the text at my own pace. But a ttrpg is a different beast entirely. A tabletop plot is a living, ephemeral thing; it happens in real-time, exists only in the moment, and can’t be flipped back a few pages when a player loses the thread.

      This leaves designers with a fascinating challenge: how do we build surreal, vibe-heavy worlds while keeping our players grounded enough to actually navigate the fiction? It’s a precarious tightrope walk, but it’s a balancing act that In a Petal Unlimited absolutely nails.

      Art by Apollo (@poliaths)

      In a Petal Unlimited is a 23 page adventure for Cairn (although designed for Wyrm, which I have not played). Words and interior art are by giant robot tackler. The cover illustration is by Apollo (@poliaths).

      “At the sea’s center, a blocky spire lunges upward, tall as a lighthouse and twice as thick. Fresh vines form a lattice on its surface. Large birds flit to and fro – a vertical ecosystem… Every hour, on the hour, a single wave pulses from the spire.”

      The Surreal, Grounded

      Among the adventure’s cited inspirations is VanderMeer’s Annihilation. In that novel, Ghost Bird/the Biologist is driven into a hallucinatory, deeply personal nightmare of ecological terror. In a Petal Unlimited riffs on those same visual themes while deftly avoiding the trap of becoming an unplayable, avant-garde slog. It stays grounded by giving the Warden concrete tools. The NPCs are sharply sculpted, allowing you to easily convey the vague sense of *intimacy* the locals feel toward their strange environment. The adventure offers a brilliant structural hook: the players are following the trail of a missing expedition. This is exactly how I opted to run the Iron Coral; *rescue* the missing explorers is a much better verb than *experience* the weirdness.

      From the Tavern to the Spire

      The adventure comes out swinging with one of the best ~meet in a tavern~ setups I have ever seen in a one-shot. The tavern here is the Last Vespers, a rudderless barge guided gently along by swarming minnows. I immediately wanted to run this adventure based on the concept of the Ship alone. The Ship acts as a launchpad for fantastic hooks–most notably Bill Billions and his experimental flying machine. I deeply appreciate that the flying machine offers a fun, open-ended escalation that can completely upend how the party approaches the Spire. I would have so much fun embodying Mr. Billions.

      Once the players begin their ascent, the module introduces a falling mechanic that made me incredibly jealous as a designer. I can instantly picture the spongy, gentle fall into the black grass, and the elegant way momentum actually makes the landing worse for the player. It’s the exact kind of physics-based hazard that is effortless to make a ruling on because you can vividly see it in your mind’s eye.

      The Spire encounters themselves all feel like they organically belong to the vertical ecosystem, presenting highly believable hazards for climbers. The believability is reinforced as the ecosystem dynamically shifts across Morning, Noon, and Evening watches.

      My personal favourite is Noon: the oppressive heat drives desperate squirrels to frantically tear into the characters’ waterskins. Perfect.

      The Delve

      When the party transitions into the dungeon encounters, the writing remains sharp, pointed, and clearly remembers to have fun with the language. The environmental events are the absolute standout here. As I was reading, I found myself wondering: what happens when the tower pulses while the PCs are inside? I wasn’t disappointed by the answer.

      A personal favourite of mine is Room 6, the Phase Error encounter. It features an NPC whose age flickers every time you blink, sitting over a chest that duplicates into unfocused images. It is exactly my kind of encounter–deeply weird, interactive visuals. The environmental *weirdness* adds a literal justification for a combat encounter with multiple phases, as the NPC splits into copies of herself on Critical Damage. It’s the kind of out-of-the-frying-pan action writing that I prefer over a traditional slugfest.

      Shape-Shifting Conclusions

      The dungeon’s surrealism reaches its peak in Area 12 where the players encounter a massive, tumorous heart, forcing out a single, torturous beat each hour. I won’t spoil the adventure, but the designer beautifully gamifies the climax by providing concrete mutation tables based on the party’s moral choices.

      Ultimately, the conclusions offered at the end of the adventure maintain the exact same grounded approach: the consequences of the players’ actions are beautifully and heavily described, but refreshingly, they are not over-explained. It leaves the mystery intact, trusting the Warden and the players to sit with the implications–much like VanderMeer would do.

    2. Mausritter Gothic

      Ever since I ran my Ravenloft campaign using Shadowdark RPG, I’ve been fantasizing about adapting the module for Mausritter, replacing the eponymous Count with a similarly tragic vampire bat. I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to run that campaign, but if I do this is the map I would use:

      1. Old Windmill. Village of 100 mice on the flagstone floor of a long-abandoned windmill. They fear the reclusive, immortal Count who lives in the rafters above the millstone. None are welcome upstairs an invitation.

      The Count HP 12
      STR 14, DEX 12, WIL 16, Armour 1
      Bite (d10), target is drained of all blood on Critical Damage and rises as an undead thrall of the Count.
      *Knows the following spells: Fireball, Darkness, Fear (Mausritter page 13)
      *Can fly 2x normal speed.
      *The Count regenerates 6 HP each time he bites a target with blood.
      *If he is killed, he becomes a cloud of mist that retreats to his roost in the rafters to regenerate. He can only be truly killed if his roost is destroyed.

      2. Flowerbed. An overgrown, mist-addled path cuts through the weeds and flowers to the graveyard north of the Windmill.

      3. Handcart. Tipped over and overgrown; sodden human debris sinks into the mud. Among the cloth, glass, and metal are dozens of human teeth.

      4. Overgrown Path. Deep gouges in the mud, gnarled roots, grasping, claw-like branches.

      5. Fence Posts. Overgrown and rotted. A twisting path through the mud rises to the windmill on the hill.

      6. Standing Stones. Ancient stark-white stone carved with arcane symbols.

      7. Ravine. Where the forest meets the hills, a narrow ravine is home to a ghastly order of vengeful, knightly lizards.

      8. Cemetery. Crooked obelisks and a shattered mausoleum. Inside, a stone sarcophagus is shattered. The human remains within are fanged and steaked with cursed wood (here lies the source of the Count’s curse).

      9. Gallows. At the crossroads, a human structure collapses into the brush.

      10. Signpost/Ditch. Overgrown wood engraved with human symbols. A ditch beneath the trail is home to frightened badger (unable to escape the mists).

      11. Lakeshore. Misty and still. An immortal, amber catfish offers Dark Boons for those who vow to slay the Count.

      12. Fallen Tree. Two dozen colourfully-dressed squirrels camp here. They are the only creatures permitted to freely leave the Count’s domain, but they prefer to stay where they know they are protected.

      13. Reed Forest/Lily Pads. The ruins of a frog village who’s burgomaster tried to defy the Count.

      14. Marshes. Bobbing witch lights and faeries can be seen here at night, where the river meets the lake.

      15. Covered Bridge. Roost of the Count’s vampire bat spawn.

      16. Evergreens. In these twin towers, an owl sorcery nurses the wounds from his near-fatal encounter with the Count. His defeat has turned him to madness.

      17. Waterfalls. Cascading waterfalls, a treacherous climb. Home of a territorial mountain goat.

      18. Wolf Cave. The Count’s most powerful ally is a mangey wolf who worships him as a God.

      19. Old Raven’s Tree. A hollowed tree and the home of an insane raven matriarch. She believes herself the mother of the Count, despite all evidence of the contrary. She infuses mousetraps with the souls of murderous rodents to make an army of wicked constructs.

    3. A Brief, Lazy Rant About the Brindlewood Bay Mystery Mechanics

      Art by Gauntlet

      Last year, a friend introduced our group to Brindlewood Bay. I was immediately struck by its near-perfect mystery system. Over six sessions, we told a largely player-driven, truly resonant story about facing loss. Now, I’m running Public Access for some of the same group. Three sessions into a planned year of play, having seen the mechanics from both sides of the screen, I have thoughts.

      Art by the Gauntlet

      As a player, it took a moment to grasp the game’s open use of modular clues. The designer makes no attempt to retroactively make the clues “real”—that’s the players’ job. They solve the mystery by being good storytellers with the provided prompts.

      For example, if my character finds “a series of numbers,” asking “What are the numbers?” is the wrong approach. The numbers mean nothing on their own; they need context.

      As a Game Master, this wasn’t a novel concept. I’ve been a fan of Sly Flourish’s The Eight Steps of the Lazy DM since I started the hobby. It boils down to keeping prep modular so you can be flexible and responsive. The eight steps are the raw ingredients you bring to cook with, but the cooking happens at the table.

      One essential ingredient I always use is secrets and clues: modular facts about the situation, plot, characters, or setting. I don’t plan how the players will discover them, but I’m ready to dish out information when they investigate.

      The major difference between running D&D with secrets and clues versus running Public Access is that, with the latter, even I don’t know what’s going on—I’m just dishing out the clues.

      I have finally found a game so well-designed I can barely prep for it.

      Art by the Gauntlet

      I was surprised yesterday to hear Sly Flourish on the Lazy RPG Talk Show critique the Daggerheart adventure, The Wish Thief, and get tripped up on this mystery mechanic.

      “I don’t know what clues to reveal if I don’t know who it is,” he said. “The secret and clue is still a specific thing that leads a specific way.”

      I’ve never used secrets and clues that way; I’ve always improvised to align with the players’ interpretations. I thought that was how they worked!

      While Daggerheart isn’t for me, I was impressed the new adventure used this mechanic, though I agree it fumbles the outcome. In the Wish Thief, whether the players solve the mystery or not, the villain escapes to trigger a chase scene. Mike rightly criticizes this railroading, but culminating a mystery in a tense scene dependent on the players’ success is a great concept.

      In Brindlewood Bay, players roll to test their theory. Depending on the roll and the depth of their investigation, they may have a chance to stop the villain. If they didn’t find many clues and roll a mid-tier result, the villain slipping away makes sense. Cue the chase. This feels much better, ensuring the players’ choices and efforts actually matter.