Strangifier 3: January 2023

I write this on a sleepy, wintry afternoon. Yesterday I played a lovely one-shot murder mystery setting with minimum prep, and when I couldn’t sleep that night my half-living mind kept chanting “Enataz, Enataz, Enataz,” the name of one of the suspects, a greedy wizard-judge. The vibe today is just a little off, but I’m happy to write that this is the first edition of the Strangifier with reader-submitted links and art.

This is art from the weekly game of a fellow who goes by the lengthy sobriquet SunderedWorldDM, set in the world of Pb (pronounced like the element Lead.) Check out some of his cheap DMing tricks here.

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Adamwb of Sstabhmontown, who claims to be famous, offers a simple d6 method of medieval-folkloric demihuman origin after some time spent in the traditional OSR pastime of thinking about fantasy race.

Arnold K. of Goblinpunch gives guidance on puzzle do’s and don’ts.

deus ex parabola of Numbers Aren’t Real wrote a conversion of 5e fighter subtypes into glog-style classes, trying to gussy them up with more simple, compelling language.

Along similar lines, I attempted to rewrite 5e subtypes as one-off abilities to be sprinkled around a sandbox game.

Also of note by deus ex parabola in this time is his Weird Napoleonic setting post, allegedly the first of several “Fullmetal Humorist” posts.

Locheil of Nothic’s Eye offers the Heartless, a glog class and love letter to the film Howl’s Moving Castle. Having recently finished reading the third Howl book, I sometimes find myself daydreaming about the chance to play this class in the perfect campaign. For those who haven’t read the books, they certainly get my recommendation in the vein of romantic fantasy. The third book in particular has assonance with the OSR crowd, as it invovles two first-level magic-users exploring a procedurally-generated dungeon full of kobolds, strange magic, and the Lubbuk, a very unbalanced random encounter.

Matthias of Liche’s Libram offers ways to tweak stat generation when replacing a dead or retired character.

OtspIII of Being an Asshole to a Goblin writes a d20 list of simple goals and twists for dragons. I don’t mind a standard dragon, but these are low concept and good to consider.

SaltyGoo of Salty Goo compiled a list of every GLoG class published as a blogpost on my glog discord server in the past year, and offered some thoughts about the patterns that emerge. I’m not sure the proportion of classes that are put to blogpost versus getting thrown out in a random channel somewhere, but given that he ended up analyzing 119 classes, I suspect it could well be 50-50.

Skerples, of Coins and Scrolls, provides a summary of early stock markets with an eye to how PCs can use them for historically-inspired schemes. See also his short pamphlet here along similar lines.

In an exercise of Spwack’s list-to-html tool, on Whose Measure God Could Not Take I made a generator for a simple dungeon-tower module, with thematically-chosen monsters and treasure in the tower (or cave, or castle) of a magical princess.

Semiurge of Archonsmar Chon wrote an excellent mythic beast generator. This is a great specimen to understand the Semiurge style in making a generator, because it carefully selects interesting and evocative points of difference. If you’re heartless, you might say there’s no reason to specify what abstract concepts gave birth to a particular monster, but with imagination those kinds of details are worth more than many paragraphs. See also this martial arts school generator.

Oldsletter

In a link sent to me by Oxus, here is a list of Chainmail house rules by Jacksonbenete. There’s some rules that I as a non-Chainmailhead find thought-provoking, and there’s extensive notes on why the author chose to formulate the rules as they are.

Locheil suggested this list of relics and spells from Chris M-S’s Spiceomancy blog, written as the final post of a “Gygax 75” challenge. Very impressive to get something so gameable and stealable out of the final week of that challenge.

Anne of DIY & Dragons once wrote an interesting post on whether hallways should be numbered and keyed on dungeon maps like any other room or simply used as connecting spaces. The more I’ve ruminated on the idea, the more I’ve come to like it, and I’ve found that when I key and stock hallways I end up with a dungeon I like a bit better. I like a good empty room, so I don’t mind the odd hallway or stairwell with no major feature, but a keyed empty room helps me to keep pace. See also: Halls of the Curséd Queens.

Arnold K.’s post about designing bosses stands out from the crowd even after over three years. Solid design advice, then game theory, then several mechanics to consider.

Captain Caveman of Cyborgs and Sorcerers gives some simple tips for hexmaps that, in my experience, bear out.

I was always impressed with this set of road encounters by Gundobad of Gundobad Games.

Plines of Hex Junkie adapted Barbarian Prince into a standard hex map, dense with content.

Apparently in 2020 Skerples wrote a megadungeon in two weeks and despite being a very interesting insight into his process I had forgotten it completely.

As I mentioned romantic fantasy in the newsletter, I thought I’d link to another post by Joseph Manola on the subject, from his blog Against the Wicked City. It’s this rewrite of the Keep on the Borderlands more than any other that compels me and makes me think on my humanity, and I’m very glad to have read it.

This early vampire generator by Semiurge shows the consistency of his good works, I think.

Theisticgilthoniel mentioned this page when I asked on my glog discord server for links to add to future editions of the Strangifier, and I didn’t look at it until now so I hope it’s good.

Farewell

Please send links, new and old, to phlox@email.com. Very serious about this, you’d be doing me a solid. I’m also keen on permission to use your art, or pictures of physical gaming artifacts like character sheets or miniatures or gaming notes.

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