Magocracy of Tula: in our thesis we invented the Owlbear as a cautionary tale

Sarpedon the Shaper: at long last, I have invented the Owlbear from the classic grimoire Don’t Invent The Owlbear

One thing I wanted to try with these cards was to put related rules on them - not just weapon damage and special rules, but climbing rules on rope, trap rules on the 10' pole, encumberance rules on the backpack, and so on.

This is a way of literally putting the rules into the players' hands - when the thief wants to throw that grappling hook he already knows what he needs to roll. This makes decisions more transparent, especially for new players.

I've even included suggestions on how to use certain items in a dungeon, so players unfamiliar with the tropes of OSR D&D understand up front what they might want iron spikes and a 10' pole for.

Started a new campaign today. Shopping for equipment always feels like a chore and a speedbump on getting into the game. I've tried to get around it with pregenerated equipment packs, but this time I decided to lean into it and make it part of play.

So I printed up these illustrated cards for starter equipment and handed out metal coins to the players equal to their starting gold, and let them just go shopping, making it a visual and tactile experience.

It really helped to get them into the mindset of preparing for a dungeon adventure, and thinking about how many empty bottles to bring, and the need for a grappling hook and 10' pole.

I mentioned this in a reply recently - my copy of Black Pudding: Heavy Helping by @JVWest

When I printed out the PDF of Ultan's Door I happened to find some nicely yellowed old paper to print it on, which got me thinking about the physicality of the trove of OSR PDFs I'd picked up around that time. The only paper I felt would do Black Pudding justice was good old-fashioned newsprint; it demanded the feel of an old underground comic.

I bought some cheap newsprint for wrapping fish & chips in and fed it through the printer a sheet or two at a time, and this was the result. The bleedthrough is lurid. As an item it's one of my most beloved RPG books.

We used material from it at least twice in my campaign - when the PCs found the Vault of the Whisperer in the Shattered Isles, and when we adapted the 'Chainmail Chick' class for Sauri, the bioroid jungle queen - but that's a story for another day.

Thinking about armour for my Red Hack heartbreaker today.

Starting with a simple B/X style set of leather, chain and plate, but every suit is made up of pieces with ½ item weight, 10gp cost, and +1 AC.

So you can patch together a suit from pieces, have an AC12 suit of leather with a breastplate, get into the detail of what hauberks and greaves and ventails you're wearing if you want to.

I like the image of PCs looking less like knights or soldiers and more rogueish with mismatched, scavenged armour.