Delving Wolf

This week's post is both a plea for you reading this and a reminder for myself. Lately, partly because of various personal reasons, I've been thinking less about TTRPGs, I was struggling to come up with ideas for adventures, to read some of the many rulebooks in my backlog, even the motivation to write in this blog seemed to be lacking. I was starting to get worried my passion for this hobby was fading away. I had so much on my mind at all times and TTRPGs, which recently occupied a good chunk of my thoughts, seemed to be relegated to a small corner. The truth is that I just needed to play. Because of those same reasons I mentioned before I didn't have time to set up any new game, either online or in person; the store I contacted to run in person games saids they'd start organizing that after the summer vacations, and online games with people from different timezones are at times a nightmare to schedule, so I had not run or played in games for almost a month. Then I fin...

This week's post will be a trip down  memory lane for me. Let's go back to November 2021. The world was doing its best to come out of the pandemic which had dramatically changed the way we see and value things for many of us. Many people approached the world of TTRPGs  during  the lockdown, as a way to escape the boredom and keep our sanity, but I didn't; instead, I started  after  I was finally able to go back to work. As I explained in my first entry in this blog , I had started watching D&D related shows but had not pull the trigger yet. But my birthday was approaching, I had no ideas on what to ask as a gift, and I found the D&D 5e Essential Kit, which promised to be a good entry point, for quite cheap on Amazon, so...why not give it a try? I'd like to point out that at that point I had no one to play with; I did start with a friend who was interested in trying it out as a player with me DMing, but I asked him only  after  ordering my gift....

Sometimes inspiration strikes you when you least expect it. The idea for this week's post comes from a walk I was taking with my wife a few days ago; we were talking about a 5e one-shot someone in a Discord server we're both in proposed recently, set underwater and where every player would be of the Locathah race. Now, for those unexperienced with D&D 5e, Locathahs came back as a playable race after 2e (something I just discovered while researching for this post) for a charity bundle, but they are considered - as far as I know - a joke race because of one specific trait:  Limited Amphibiousness. You can breathe air and water, but you need to be submerged at least once every 4 hours to avoid suffocating.  So, as my wife and I were discussing the choice of such a peculiar restriction, we were saying that outside of these specific circumstances (a fully underwater setting) Locathahs are almost unplayable, unless everyone in the party is committed to the bit and is ok with a ...

This week I'll go back to Cairn 2e after creating a PC for it a few weeks ago . This time I'll follow the procedure presented in Cairn 2e's Warden's Guide  to create a monster in just a few simple steps, strating by (you guessed it) rolling on some random tables, in the best OSR tradition.   Let's start with the Monster Appearance  table, which asks us to roll a d20 twice, once for  Physique  and once for  Feature : Physique : 5, Eyeless ; Feature : 20,  Wings. So it's some form of bat.   Next, we have the  Monster Traits  table, for  Quirk  and  Weakness : Quirk : 6, Draws symbols ;  Weakness : 12,  Music . Ok, I'm getting ideas. Maybe it's some kind of familiar, drawing symbols on preys for its master, but music distracts it, preventing it from following orders? Not sure yet. The third table we roll on is  Monster Attacks , for  Type  and  Critical Damage . Type : 8, Shoots ; Critical Damage...

This week, to add to my series of character creation posts (which started a few weeks ago with a Cairn 2e character ), I'll make a Maze Rats character. This book, created by Ben Milton (Questing Beast), is known mostly for its  many  random tables, usable for NPCs and monster creation, dungeon stocking, worldbuilding and much more, but it's also a game system. It has some similarities with the Into the Odd family of games, although with some major differences. First of all, it uses 2d6 (or 3d6 keeping the highest 2 if you have advantage) for its saves, instead of 1d20, and instead of rolling under your ability score you aim at beating a set difficulty of 10 (or the enemy's armor in combat) by adding your attribute (which start between 0 and 2 and can't get higher than 4) to what you roll on the 2d6. It also has levels, up to level 7, after which you're encouraged to "retire" your character and start a new one at level 1, but even at level 7 characters are...

This week I continue with the recap of my Labyrinth Lord solo adventure, starring Darien the Elf. This is the second of the six sessions that took me to complete this adventure; if you haven't yet, you can check out part 1 here . Enjoy!   THE ABANDONED TOWER   Part 2 Darien approaches the door at the end of the room and gently checks it, finding it unlocked. He slowly opens it and  [1-2 on 1d6 for a random encounter: 1! 1d6 to see what he meets: 4 = 1d6 giant rats: dangerous]  in the same moment one of the two doors at the other end of the room slams open and  [1d6:3]  three giant rats swarm in!  [Dex check: 5, success]  Darien immediately backs out of the room, closing the door and using his own weight to keep it shut as the rats claw at it from the other side.  [Would he know that giant rats are terrified of fire? Int check: 5 again, success]  He quickly develops a plan, so he unsheats his longsword and, while holding firmly the torch ...