Design

  • Trophy Freed

    So, I’ve finished writing the main text of Bridewell, with only the maps to go. I’ll do another editing pass to my satisfaction, and then I’ll want to playtest it with myself as GM. I’ve been playing mainly Trophy Gold lately, and I’m really enjoying it as a system. Trophy Dark has a free SRD Continue reading

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  • Bridewell Gothic: State of Play

    Forgive me for this pointless stream of consciousness, but I’m spending so much time on this project right now and I want to talk about it. My all-consuming project right now is Bridewell Gothic (or perhaps just Bridewell, that’s just not a great name for a project). It’s intended to be a system agnostic gothic Continue reading

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  • Module Design and Scaffolding

    I read Throne of Avarice this morning on its release, which brands itself a “setting book and procedural generation toolbox.”. I considered writing a review of it, but I’ve been avoiding reviewing new releases as my Bathtub Reviews can be quite critical. But I found myself encountering a very specific problem. This book is jam Continue reading

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  • Time bubbling

    Timekeeping is important when you’re running multiple groups simultaneously in the same world. Doing this means you get to do half the preparation, and might get to re-use preparation on a second group. It’s pretty good GMing practice for people like me, who want to play a lot, but can’t find easy ways to play Continue reading

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  • What’s your apocalypse?

    I was writing a post about a timekeeping technique called Time Bubbling (coming soon!), and I realised that there was a worldbuilding technique that I think is essential to most fantasy worlds that we play treasure-hunting in: Apocalypsing. Don’t worry, this one will be a quick one. Most D&D-likes are post-apocalyptic. When you’re world-building, the Continue reading

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  • Combining fast travel and pathcrawling

    Honestly, if you thought I wasn’t going to come back to Advanced Fantasy Dungeons, you were being optimistic. Marcia’s Mosaic Worlds neatly matches with AFD’s counties, and then she wrote about Fast Travel using these counties, which provided me with impetus to trial an option where the words “watch” and “hex” are excised, when they Continue reading

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  • Advanced Fantasy Dungeons: Pre-alpha reflection

    If you’re walking in on the end of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here. That’s a wrap! Kind of, anyway, we have our rules sketched out. Advanced Fantasy Dungeons is the broadest, largest game I’ve written. Next, I’ll start laying it out into an alpha document so I can start limited playtesting Continue reading

  • Rules Sketch: War revised

    If you’re walking in on the middle of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here. I want to increase the tactics and surprise of war without increasing memory or complexity. Here’s our first attempt, where I was mirroring Journeying: When you issue an order to a battalion, tell your general. They will report Continue reading

  • Rules Sketch: Stocking and creating treasure

    If you’re walking in on the middle of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here. Treasure in second edition is a ridiculously complicated affair. Each creature is assigned a treasure type such as D, M x 100, or Q x 10. Major treasures are in a lair (A-I) minor treasures are on the Continue reading

  • Rules Sketch: Granted Powers

    If you’re walking in on the middle of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here. The challenge with granted powers is that I don’t want them to just be free spells. Let’s look at the granted powers in the “design a faith” section of the Complete Priest’s Handbook. Some are intended to replace Continue reading

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Recent Posts

Threshold of Evil – Dungeon Regular

Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
  1. Threshold of Evil
  2. Secrets of the Towers
  3. Monsterquest
  4. They Also Serve
  5. The Artisan’s Tomb

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