Friday Encounter: Lost Spellbook

Here's a simple encounter that can fuel further developments in the campaign, and potentially give rise to a recurring adversary for the PCs. It is suited to any environment - in a dungeon, the wilderness, on the road, or possibly even in a town (such as in an alleyway somewhere). To best make use of this encounter, there should be at least one wizard in the party.

One way or another, the party should come across a discarded spellbook somewhere - either cast aside haphazardly, or guarded by some sort of trap or guardian. If a wizard can retrieve the book, and possesses the necessary spell slots and components, they will have access to whatever spells were recorded in its pages and can prepare and cast them.

To make this encounter the most fun, you should plan it in advance so the book contains spells that the wizard in the party does not already know, but that would benefit their character or play style (use your judgment here). This will expand the list of spells at their disposal. Incidentally, this is something I think DMs should do more of to tie PC advancement into the world - why have your players just pick new spells on leveling up when they can find them in books, or learn them from mentors? To make things really fun, include some spells that require spell slots the wizard doesn't have access to at their current level - this will provide an incentive to the player to pursue advancement so they can use their new spells, and gives them something to look forward to.

However, there is always a catch - and the spellbooks of unfamiliar wizards are not things to meddle with so lightly. The spellbook is attuned to its original user - although they may have misplaced it once, as soon as a different mage begins to draw power from the pages, the enchantments written into the book will alert its original owner to its current whereabouts, and that owner will surely be unhappy with something as priceless as a well-crafted spellbook containing years of study falling into the wrong hands.

This is a great way to introduce an rival magic-user to the campaign - ideally, one more learned and powerful than the PC wizard in order to provide some tension (and to explain the presence of higher-level spells - and again, to give the player something to aspire to!). I've deliberately left this open-ended so you can develop an antagonist suited to the PC in question. Their pursuit of the book can easily provide fodder for multiple adventures. They might send their servants after the party to try and retrieve the book, or inflict the PCs with curses or other obstacles. Sooner or later, though, they'll inevitably want to seek the thief out face-to-face for a battle of magical prowess!

The Year of the Gazetteer: A Retrospective

Click here to enlargee

With the Year of the Gazetteer behind us, I'd like to think back on how much it has done for this blog in the last twelve months. We went from averaging about two and a half posts a month in 2022 and 2023 to having at least 10 a month, with 2024 having 149 posts - my most productive year by far. I created 13 hex maps (counting Ochsebad) of various regions in my long-running Lunar Lands setting, which has hosted almost every campaign I've run since middle school - altogether detailing 33,543 hexes and 229,233 square miles of setting. That's an area a little smaller than Madagascar if smushed together, although the areas are not contiguous. I also wrote several articles, including lore, adventure hooks, and homebrew game material, that detailed different parts of my setting, fulfilling the purpose I made this blog for in the first place but never knew where to start with. Keep your eyes out for a Lunar Lands index in the future, where I will catalogue this material.

I learned a couple things along the way. Originally, I intended to use three-mile hexes for every map - I'm inclined to agree with Mythlands' points about this scale - but as I expanded beyond Switzerland-sized Lescatie I realized that it would just be unfeasible to keep making maps in that scale on a regular basis. After the undertaking that was Togarmah, I realized that even doing six-mile-hex maps of many regions was too big to do in detail, and most of the maps are only partial segments of their respective regions. Nevertheless, I still think there's more than enough to last a good few campaigns. Maybe some day I'll go back and fill in the gaps with hex maps of the remaining areas, but for now, it's a project I'm quite satisfied with.

Out of all the maps, the one that's gotten the most attention has been that of the Freikantons, which has sat in my list of most popular posts for some time now. I suspect this comes from its links to Ochsebad, which I submitted for the Summer Lego RPG Setting Jam at DIY & Dragons, realizing how I could contribute to both projects (which was a lot of fun!). Or maybe bitches just love the Old Swiss Confederacy. Who knows.

From here, I want to go from a big success (at the time of this writing, my post on terrain rules for combat is still my biggest success) to what I consider my biggest failed experiment. This didn't happen last year but the year before, but back then, I wrote a post about how the setting of the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica would work well for an OSR campaign. I still think that, but I'm sad to say I don't think that's a campaign that will ever see the light of day. Though the post brought a lot of attention to my blog - even making it onto the OSR subreddit, somehow - a lot of the discourse there made me realize that there is not a lot of overlap between why I enjoyed Madoka Magica and why everyone else did.

I should note that I got into the series very early on in its run, I believe the day it blew up online as soon as the third episode aired (if you know, you know), and at that time, there had not been much in the way of character development; what drew me in was the interesting and very gameable setting and magic system, which seemed like it was going somewhere. I thought that setting would lend itself well to OSR gameplay. However, most of the reception I got was about how OSR systems don't model interpersonal dynamics well, despite me stating this was the aspect of the series I found the weakest. What I realized was that it's been over ten years, and most people now know Madoka Magica for the character-driven show it ended up becoming. I found the setting interesting but the characters unlikeable, whereas the fandom generally finds the characters likeable but the setting uninteresting (or at least unimportant). Nowadays, anyone wanting to play a game in the Madoka Magica universe is probably going to expect a depressed lesbian psychodrama instead of the horror-infused dungeon-delving sandbox about grappling with the limits of your own humanity I wanted to run, and that isn't really the kind of campaign I would be interested in running.

Anyway, I bring all of this up because this experience has taught me absolutely nothing.

Art by Martin Rodriguez

2025: The Year of the Barbarian

Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.

- Robert E. Howard

Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.

- Arnold Schwarzenegger

Gee, if only I was a half-naked, super-ripped dude who could solve every single problem with one blow from his enchanted blade, THEN maybe I could get some gasoline and a lower interest rate on my home loan.

- Misterkitty's Stupid Comics

Lately, I've gotten deeply into a specific kind of fantasy. Sword-and-sorcery blood-and-thunder barbarian hero pulp heroic fantasy. The likes of Conan, Kull, Red Sonja, Fafhrd, Thongor, we can offer an honorable mention to Dave. While barbarians in the Lunar Lands tend to look more like ancient Celts or Germanics, I can't deny that I don't love myself a good Frazetta or Vallejo mighty-thewed warrior, in its own context.

I've been getting into not only 30s barbarian pulp, but also 70s barbarian comics, a surprisingly deep genre that Trey at From the Sorcerer's Skull has written plenty about. He's even done some writings of a game meant to emulate that milieu. I have him to credit for introducing me to Arak, Son of Thunder, which would have gotten into the Lunar Lands Appendix N had I not discovered it so recently and had there not been other, longer-standing influences to include It got me thinking of how I could do something like that myself - and, in particular, there are a few settings I've looked at that I feel would lend themselves well to such an approach. Neither are my own creation, but both I feel tap into the well of sword and sorcery goodness in their own ways.

One is a setting from the second big wave of pulp fantasy that I find incredibly gameable, and which has had a much bigger influence on the tabletop RPG world than many people realize, most likely due to its (in my opinion undeserved) bad reputation. The other is a setting I have talked about here on the blog several times already, one which, despite its association with another popular comic artist (to the point where most people overestimate how much involvement he had in it), I think would shine with a reinterpretation in the Mighty Marvel Manner under the theoretical pen of Roy Thomas. I intend to explore each of these in a forthcoming series of posts.

I'll still be posting the occasional Lunar Lands lore, of course - but we'll take a detour that will ring in the Year of the Barbarian! Stay tuned for what's to come!

Tennurhaf Hex Map

What better way to end the Year of the Gazetteer than with one last hex map? This one covers the Tennurhaf. As there's a lot of empty space, each hex equals twelve miles.

Click here to enlarge

Friday Encounter: Vengeance!

Across the Spider-Verse

This is a simple encounter, but one designed to play off of pre-established events in the campaign. As such, I've deliberately left things vague in order for the DM to fill in whatever details are necessary to ground it in the proper context. It could work in any setting, be it the wilderness, a town, or a dungeon - anywhere the party could be accosted.

The PCs should be approached by someone who seeks vengeance against them for some perceived wrongdoing against them or their family. This would work best if it is an NPC they've met before, and that wrongdoing is something the PCs themselves have caused (this is a great way to punish murderhobo behavior). This character wouldn't even need to be a preestablished villain necessarily - it can be just as fun for the PCs to create a recurring villain out of someone they antagonized before. For instance, if the PCs broke into a wizard's tower to steal some magical artifact, have that wizard show up down the line looking to get it back by force - or, failing that, to satisfy their righteous indignation by settling things head to head!

Naturally, this will likely lead to combat, so you'll want to have a statblock on hand that would make for a good opponent. These will likely have to be tailored to the scenario, as a wizard would fight quite differently than a warrior. But they can still use different maneuvers, bring allies along to engage the party, and engage them in an exploitable setting to try and gain the upper hand. Consider tactics, interesting environments, and other factors I discuss here to make the session an interesting one.

Of course, it can also be interest to have the vengeful NPC engage the PCs in a less straightforward confrontation. Maybe they're too powerful to deal with head-on, and the PCs have to run and/or hide from them in a tense chase or stakeout. Maybe they start targeting the party from behind the scenes with assassins or ambushes, creating a mystery that the players will have to solve in order to determine who it is that's bothering them, and why.

It doesn't have to be the same person as a character they've met before. Say, for example, the PCs killed a particular NPC. You could have their brother show up, looking to avenge their death, or a bounty hunter sent by their associates. Consider how worldbuilding can play into this - in cultures that have a system similar to the Norse weregild, for instance, there may be societal motivations to seek revenge in order to right a wrong. This can be a good way to immerse the players in an unfamiliar way of thinking by confronting them with the consequences of their actions in a way that has implications in the setting.

Lastly, although it's the most fun to have this encounter follow on from something the PCs did before, an alternative option is for the PCs to be accused of something they didn't do. Here, the pursuer might be someone known to the PCs, or it could even be a complete stranger! Now, not only do the PCs have the immediate threat to deal with, they also need to investigate how this mistake happened before it gets out of hand. Is it a simple case of mistaken identity, or are they being framed?

The Althing

Government in the North is a far less codified affair than it is in other lands. The land is rugged, the weather is harsh, and the people are wont to engage in raiding - all factors that limit such things as trade, taxation, and the dissemination of orders. But perhaps for that exact reason, there is a need for some structures to bring order to a chaotic land. In much of the North, and in the Tennurhaf in particular, governance is accomplished through the tradition of the althing, at once a meeting of parliament and a festival that draws people from across the land.

Each of the petty kingdoms and clans of the North follow their own schedule for these meetings, but generally, an althing is held at least once a year. It calls for an assembly of chieftains and leaders representing each of the territories in a given realm, who speak on behalf of their people. In larger kingdoms, there may be a system of regional things that deal with more local matters, and appoint delegates to represent a given locality at the national althing. At these events, a class of lawspeakers - those wise men tasked with memorizing and reciting the legal code, given that literacy is rare in the North - read the law aloud, and are called upon to inform judgments. Althings are public affairs; any free person is welcome to attend, and is entitled to speak as much as they please at a designated site. Through this, cases and grievances are brought up before the chieftains and lawspeakers by the people so that they can pass their judgment on them, and so that they can understand what matters concern the common folk.

Typically, what happens is that a citizen brings up a dispute, the lawspeakers advise the chieftains, and the chieftains (or the king, if there is one; in these societies, a monarch typically acts under the counsel of their vassal chieftains) pronounce a final verdict. In most corners of the North, the chieftains have no power to enforce a law; that is left up to the people themselves, usually the family of the aggrieved. For instance, if one is deemed to owe another party a fine, then the chieftains can confirm this is the case, but it is the party that is owed who must see to it that the money is collected, by whatever means are necessary.

The Northmen typically settle disputes through the paying of weregild - that is, each person is deemed to have a specific monetary value, and if they are killed or harmed, that value must be made up, either through monetary payments or through killing another of that value. This, predictably, has led to many bloody feuds and kin-strifes which threatened in some cases to upend society. To prevent such a thing from happening, the Northmen began to observe the althing so that disputes could be settled without bloodshed running out of control. Often, an althing will see people brought together from multiple villages, clans, or tribes - because of this, they are always held on what is deemed neutral ground, always a space designated for the occasion and usually at a spot easily accessible from all corners of the realm. It is rare that these spaces are designed for permanent habitation, and most attendees stay in tents and temporary dwellings.

Nevertheless, with so many people coming from so long a distance to meet at the althing, the occasion has grown into something akin to a local festival. It is an opportunity for merchants and craftsmen to showcase their work to new clients, for would-be sellswords to find patrons, and for markets to be held. Althings can last for days at a time - that of Jerrborg, for instance, lasts for two weeks in the spring - and there are plenty of diversions to keep one occupied. Skalds sing, games like bowling, axe-throwing, and tafl (a board game similar to chess) are held, and so are contests of strength, like stone-tossing and wrestling between both men and horses (usually against an opponent of the same species, but not always). For many, the althing is a social event; for some that is more important than its political functions.

It must be noted that the althing is a system intended to keep the peace in a tumultuous land - and thus, neutrality is very important. No one is allowed to bear weapons at an althing, or to shed blood. There may be more than just social ostracism at stake - it is common for arcane rituals and sacrifices to be made at these events to consecrate them to the gods, and many sites are marked by enchanted runestones. Those who defy the rules of the althing may well bring a powerful curse down upon them.

Jerrborg

There are a great many islands in the Tennurhaf, ranging from humble sea-stacks to realms in their own right. The largest of them all, however, is Jerrborg. It was one of the first islands of the Tennurhaf to be settled by the Northmen, and as such boasts a robust population, more settled than many in the region - though the harsh winters and the constant raiding and kin-strife of the people keep it from seeing much peace.

All of Jerrborg is united under a single ruler, the Jarl Haakon Wolf-Eye. He rules from his mead-hall in the town of Erikstead (hex 114.035). A respectable port - the largest in the Tennurhaf, in fact - Erikstead sees traffic from various Northmen clans and kingdoms in the summer market fairs; sometimes, traders from as far as Kvesland and Vardessy come here too to bring furs to southern lands. Haakon rules with a fair hand, rewarding his peoples' valor in battle with treasure from his vast hoard, but the warrior spirit in him has not died out - he was a raider in his youth before being granted the kingdom when the previous Jarl died and gave him the throne as a token of his gratitude for faithful service. Deep down, Haakon has not accepted the settled life, and still desires the life of adventure and glory - this means that he may shirk his duties if a great enough opportunity raises its head, but that may put his domain at risk.

Other settlements in Jerrborg include Raunhofn (hex 111.031), a modest coastal settlement that survives off of fishing and whaling. The summer marks a great whale hunt, where all the townspeople descend to their boats and set out on the water to hunt with spears and harpoons; one who can slay the greatest whale will receive great honor for the rest of the year. Notably, the local definition of "whale" is a loose one, and many winners have in fact slain krakens and sea serpents, though even if vanquishing such beasts is a heroic deed, they are not quite as favored from a productive statement - their carcasses are not as useful as a true whale's.

Also is Anarfell (hex 112.034), a logging community in the wooded foothills that surround Jerrborg's central mountains. The locals here are quite superstitious, and have many charms to protect them against elves and other fair folk; they shut their doors at night, and are reluctant to give their names out to strangers, lest they be delivering them to the fey to curse them with. Their suspicions have some truth for them, for there is a village of elves not far from Anarfell (hex 113.033). These elves, however, are not keen on terrorizing their neighbors, for they themselves dwell in the shadow of the red dragon Baelfir, who calls the mountains his domain. The dragon can be found above the peaks of the mountains, but his cave is located in hex 114.032, where he rests upon a great golden hoard. He may also be found on the shores of the volcano at hex 113.032, where he bathes in magma and consumes fire-roasted stones to temper his fiery breath. Baelfir is a capricious creature, prone to launching attacks on nearby settlements for no reason other than his own amusement, but like many dragons, he is also vain and takes pride in his majesty, and can easily be distracted with the songs of his praises.

Like many places in the North, Jerrborg is home to a number of runestones and stone circles. One, on the southern shore (hex 111.034), marks the site of Jerrborg's annual althing, an assembly of the island's peoples for trading, celebration, and holding court on legal matters. The assembly takes place in a low depression on the shore, said to have been a footprint left by a giant in some ancient bygone age. As much of Jerrborg's population is concentrated around the southwest coast, this location was chosen for its ease of access from all major settlements on the island. At these assemblies, laws are spoken, challenges are made, and all matter of goods may be sold and games may be played - it is a fine time to seek work.

On the northern moors, however, a small stone circle (hex 113.030) stands on the cliffs overlooking the shore. The stones are carved with images of men and women in flight. If a goat is sacrificed here and its blood spilled on the altar, whoever makes the sacrifice shall be able to fly short distances at a time until the coming of the next full moon. Of course, there are also rumors of wicked cults meeting at this site for darker purposes...

A final secret is that the line of ruling jarls today were not the first people to colonize Jerrborg. Northmen attempted to settle on the north of the island many ages before, but the harsh winters - and the watchful eye of Baelfir - doomed their settlement to a tragic end. However, the remains of those warriors' fortress still sit in the forest (hex 116.032) - along with the barrows of the men slain in those early conflicts, who shall still rise to defend them if need be.

Friday Encounter: Runestone Treasure Hunt

This encounter is fairly straightforward, but it's intended to get players thinking in terms of self-directed exploration, rewarding them for remembering landmarks and scouring the map for points of interest. It's by design the sort of puzzle you would find in an open-world video game. It will need some DM effort in advance to lay out a good treasure hunt - to this end, I've left it deliberately vague so that DMs can add their own landmarks and trails. The inciting incident could be placed in the wilderness, on the road, in a dungeon, or even in a town as a local landmark - the townspeople may or may not know about the nature of the stone, if you want to give your players hints to set them on their way. It may still be useful for players to hear rumors of a map to buried treasure written on runestones to get them in the right frame of thought.

The party should come upon a large standing stone in which runes and images are carved. The stonework can be discerned as depicting a distinctive landmark of some kind - this should be something specific enough that it cannot easily be mistaken for somewhere else. For instance, the stone could show a tower on an island in a lake, with a tree growing at its side. This image corresponds to another landmark in the game world some distance away from the stone.

It's up to you as to how the players should figure out where this landmark is. They could get hints from asking people in the nearby area, or they could consult written records that mention a similar feature in order to get directions to it. Alternatively, a DC 15 History check could be used to pinpoint the location the image depicts (for optimal fun, you can have a successful check give the location, but a failed check still give the player hints that approximate the next step in the trail - they'll have to do the legwork themselves to see how they apply). If all else fails, it's also fun to let the PCs stumble upon the landmark by happenstance if they pass through the same point or hex it was located - hopefully they'll remember the stone.

If the party follows the trail to this location, they will find another runestone, this one with a different image depicting a different landmark. Once again, following the clues to this next location will reveal another runestone, and so on. You can repeat this as many times as you like (or for as long as you think the players will be interested) - about four to five steps will work. You can also include additional challenges or puzzles along the way. Perhaps the first stone or two can be found easily enough by just being in the area, but later stones might be in more difficult locations to reach, such as at the top of a cliff, or guarded by an enemy or trap.

At the end of the trail, the party will find a monolith with no markings at all, just bare stone. If they dig in the ground, they will discover a treasure chest buried beneath this stone; it takes about an hour to unearth the chest. Inside is 4,100 GP's worth of gold, silver, platinum, and jewels, as well as one magic item for each member of the party suited to their class and play style.

This encounter is meant to be something for the players to pursue on their own, but it could also work as a competition. Perhaps a rival group is following the stones as well, and now the PCs must race against time to get to the treasure before they do - potentially facing sabotage along the way!