His Majesty The Worm: Day of the Newts Masterpost

 

A traveling magic show. A kidnapped actor. Webbed footprints leading into a cave. Churning lava. Sadistic salamanders. A fresh spin on the dungeon crawling genre. All this and more in Day of the Newts

 

Gencon 2026 Recap: Pickup Games

 

I ran two pickup games at Gencon with my friends and played a couple games. My friends wanted to play His Majesty The Worm so I brought some spare character sheets to the convention and ran them through the same scenario from the ticketed event. Later we painted some Delta Green Agents using a Wargames Atlantic sprue I brought to the con, and I ran them through a Delta Green adventure at the airport.

 

Gencon 2026 Recap: Scheduled Games

Special thanks to the free painting table and to my friends for painting with me
 

I ran two ticketed events at Gencon 2026. All the players did a great job and we finished both sessions early, a little over two hours in a three hour slot.

 

Appendix N 2026 Bonus Dungeon: Hung Over and Harassed

 

In His Majesty The Worm there are a lot of city events that, if taken seriously, would be an entire adventure in themselves. The book chides the reader not to play out these adventures because it could turn the campaign into a “town game”.

Guess what we’re doing today?

Into The Odd: Clerics of the Carmine Dawn

 

The Brilg and Spowegg expedition to Hogman's Plain was going great. The desert was lethally hot by day and infested with undead by night, but the gunboat cared not for either as it motored up the River Hog. When the sun rose over the mountains and stayed trapped there for sixteen hours, bathing the desert in perpetual dawn light, Captain Yarrow of the Rent Seeker wasn't fazed. He sent four of his handpicked explorers ashore to investigate the tower on the horizon, in case there was some connection to the otherworldly weather.

• Dimitri the Aleman and his Mule
• Skar Disanto, Disgraced Detective
• Cassie "Castle", Ax Woman
• Barb the Barbarian, from the lands outside Bastion

It was a bit of a hike to the tower. The sun didn't go anywhere. 

 

Appendix N 2026 Dungeon: Clerics of the Carmine Dawn

The Clerics of the Carmine Dawn have tidally locked the planet. The sunlit side will boil. The nightside will freeze. Only a band of twilight will remain habitable unless a scratch team of heroes can infiltrate the Clerics’ Tower.

Appendix N 2026 Bonus Dungeon: The Essence of Eblis

 

Before God taught man the divine art of water creation, the desert was ruled by the Djinn. They called storms as they pleased, bringing rain to their worshipers and drought to those who defied them. One such Djinni was Eblis.

 

Riverboat Gambler: Epilogue

 

The mantis Colored Shell leaped from the slab and fell atop the bounty hunter Senthrax Blackmath. Somewhere the tribe did the same to the Orc and the Amazon and the others. They might have been within the reach of a claw or in line of sight or far away. Colored Shell didn't notice or care after her forelegs closed around his body. She clasped him tight and he struck her four times for every one bite she took from his head. The first rasping cut from her mandibles caught the spikes of his helm and injured her. The second too. 

 

Camp Followers: Social Realist Dungeonsploitation

Weenix

This is a dungeon crawling game where you play as Camp Followers, civilians who accompany a party of NPC Adventurers on a dungeon expedition. You can play it with the system and dungeons you already have. I'm using OSE Advanced Fantasy for mine and I'll try to offer examples any time I say to grab something off the internet. The social dynamic between the Followers and the Adventurers fits any setting from the bronze age to the early modern period, or their fantasy equivalents.

 

His Majesty The Worm: Day of the Newts Playtest

Traveling mountebank Bartoc the Orc and his wife Mary the Alchemist woke at their camp site to find Mary's mother, Salamandra "Sherry the Mage" Hakkapeliitta, missing. In her place were a set of webbed footprints leading into a fissure in the nearby rock face that definitely wasn't there last night. They thought about retrieving Mary's father Lorikeet "Larry the Mage Hakkapeliitta and her sister Tansy Hakkapeliitta from the nearby town where they were staying. They decided to err on the side of speed and went into the cave after mom.

 

Against Mapping

 

Many years ago the Alexandrian guy noted in his OD&D retrospective that mapping sucks. More recently the Coins and Scrolls guy noted something similar about his OD&D game. And maybe a day after that the His Majesty The Worm guy said something identical on his discord about his OSE game. After running two campaigns of Esoteric Enterprises where I enforced player mapping, then one where I didn't, I agreed with all three of them. 

 

Then a couple weeks ago, the Knight at the Opera guy posted his advice about what to do if you tried mapping and everyone hated it. I was excited to learn his fix and it turned out to be the exact thing that I had already tried, which made everyone miserable. "Balls and sticks" style mapping where you give the exits and directions out of the room, rather than the precise dimensions of every wall and corridor. 

  

A while back I wrote Against Torches. If I'm against torches, which never really did anything to me, I'm definitely Against Mapping, which is a whole lot worse.

 

Riverboat Gambler Masterpost

Lear

 

LADIES and GENTLEMEN

For crimes INCLUDING but NOT LIMITED TO  

CANNIBALISM

SLAVE TRADING

GROSS violation of the moral law in service of a PROSCRIBED DEITY

And his FAILURE to appear before this body and give account of these accusations

The GENIUS LOCI is proud to announce

(PAID FOR by generous contributions from POTION ADDICT, the WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF THE MATACHINS, the FRIENDS OF NATURAL JUSTICE, and the TOWER OF PAIN)

A bounty of FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND SILVER PIECES

On the outlaw ALDRICH BRISBANE

(The VILLAIN last seen absconding to HOGMAN'S PLAIN)

DEAD

OR

ALIVE

 

Riverboat Gambler - Music

Dali

 

The Priestess who handed the Thresher an enormous loaf and a tureen of spiced lentils told him the thing in his heart was a gift. He said nothing to her but she saw through him into his heart. The Goddess would not take it away like she would a physical wound. It hurt but it separated him from the things that squirmed and writhed in the vaults beneath the Tower of Pain. The ones which, turned loose, would mindlessly kill and kill until driven back into the cave with holy sigils and command words.

Animals had instinctive fear of man. A sword was no different from a stinger or a claw and from the moment they could walk, they ran. Not so for children, even the children of monstermen. They associated creatures larger than themselves with smiling faces and food. They rushed toward the armored figures as they came through the door, chirping excitedly, expecting companionship and play- At what point had he himself gone from expecting companionship and play to accepting the splash of arterial blood on his face without flinching? He recalled playing with pillbugs in the straw. Imagining he rode a dragon. He recalled also how he had set a trap for the cat under the milk pail. He had tormented ants until they flew into a rage and killed their sisters. If others were cruel to him he was crueler still. Perhaps there was no transition. Was that an excuse he made to himself? Did he say he was born rotten because he couldn't accept that he had allowed it to happen? A click came from the big board. Below the image of the bread and the sword, the display ticked over. The Thresher's name appeared in the order of precedence next to his new score. The Goddess' love came freely but her approval was hard won. It filled the Thresher in an instant. Stronger than beer and the taste of buttered bread. Stronger than the bullet in his heart when he thought about what he had done to get his name there.

 

Riverboat Gambler Session Twelve

Diefenbach

On one side of the flooded room

• Roddy Applecreek
• Datura the Elf, still giant from the Potion of Growth
• Jack Fatherd
• Alice Woodfingers the Mower and her two Grain Clerics
• A reduced force of Hsigo
• A Shambling Mound made of ANFO
• Five Giant Bats and six Giant Woodpeckers to carry them 

On the other side

• Baradye the Blue Dragon
• Aldrich Deathdragon, transformed into a smaller Blue Dragon
• Poliouchos the Dwarf, Holy Slave of Quickness
• A Disciple of Zezyan
• 28 desert warriors pledged to the Disciple

 

At the heart of it all, the Star Spawn.

Riverboat Gambler Session Eleven

Roberts

 

Reunited with their boats, flush with the treasure of the massacred giants and concerned about dragon-Aldrich's considerable lead, the Gamblers met with Alice and Captain Leadcutter and planned their next move. They had five giant bats and six giant woodpeckers to carry them into the High Plain. Besides the Gamblers they decided to take Alice, two low level Grain Clerics, the Shambling Mound full of ANFO, a Scarecrow and a spare bomb. They'd ride the flying animals while the Hsigo scouted the area around the party. Roddy prepared a handful of grenades and distributed them to the Hsigo so they could bombard targets from the air. 

 

Encanta stared into the middle distance. The Gamblers thought she was having an absence seizure. Then she snapped her head forward and spoke in a voice they didn't recognize. The Gamblers owed a debt service payment on their cool ship. There was a little matter of 100,000 SP pending.

 

The Gamblers recognized this phenomena. The financial concern to whom they owed repayment had sold the debt to the Repo Men, an adventurers' guild like Iron Cup or Potion Addict. They used long range possession to enforce repayment even when debtors journeyed to the furthest realms. Datura negotiated the Repo Man down from 10K to 3,000 silver pieces, which she paid out of her own pocket. The Halfling pressed her face to the stone block they used as a table and slurped up the coins, which never made it down her throat into her stomach. Then she snapped back into her own body. Why did her mouth taste like sand? 

 

Into the Nest: Playtest

The Tomb Robber descended the rope ladder into the burial shaft. The freshly exposed pit was home to the enormous burrowing insects harassing the town, but also to an untouched mausoleum hopefully filled with treasure. Delving alone was risky but meant he wouldn't have to share the rewards with anyone. He hefted his sword in one hand and his lantern in the other and proceeded into the tomb, passing under the image of a man with the wings of a grasshopper.

 

Undercroft: The Wastes

Martin

The Wastes are a place where negative energy intrudes into the dungeon from the plane of death and undead. Superficially they’re not all that different from the rest of the Undercity. The Devils help set them apart.

Riverboat Gambler Session Ten

Mayer 

 

Jack Fatherd, Roddy Applecreek and Datura the Elf led a squad of Hsigo into the mastaba. They entered on the third level and took a spiral staircase down to the bottom floor, following the tracks left by the birds. The bottom floor landing had four stone doors, one in each direction.

• North, illustrated with images of crocodiles. The door was open, the tracks led through.
• West, illustrated with a man descending into a watery abyss
• South, illustrated with a sarcophagus
• East, illustrated with a baboon headed man and a beetle headed woman.

Jack opened the southern door in hopes of finding treasure. He stopped in his tracks when he noticed a slot in the ceiling, where a stone slab could descend and trap him in the room.

Datura followed the tracks into the north room. The seven surviving giant woodpeckers stood around a pool filled with sand. They gave warning cries. Datura shot one of the wounded birds and they attacked as a flock. The east door opened and a flood of animal mummies spilled out into the landing.

Undercroft: The Mines

Parker

 

The mines beneath the City were officially closed long ago when they ran dry, and when buildings began to collapse. The opening of the Underworld has filled them up with dungeon monsters and ignited a gang war over the remaining treasure.

Undercroft: The Weald

 

Diefenbach

The Weald is a place where the natural world thrives in the lightless depths of the Undercity, defying physical laws that demand sun and rain for things to grow.