Check it out here (it’s free!) and I’d love it if you voted for it in the jam!

I rarely write adventures this concise these days, so this was a different lane for me. Here’s how I made it.

If you want to run this adventure with Cairn, check out my Borg to Cairn conversion guide for info on how to convert stats.

Cover first

The first thing I focused on was the cover idea. It was going to be the toughest bit so I went for that head-on. I have a love-hate relationship with illustration in a way that I don’t with writing or layout and it’s gotten pretty bad of late, so I wanted to get this bit done first.

I liked the idea of a pulpy-dark-fantasy-stormy-death-knight-type as the focus. Something that was reminiscent of 1980s LOTR covers. It would be the individual who possessed ‘A Crown Forged of Lightning’. She would be the main antagonist of this whole affair.

Colour palette wise, this is all a single hue of blue, just varied with saturation and value. I like painting with limited palette, and the same hue extends through the layout as well.

You can see how the cover illustration came together in the time-lapse below. I had thought about including a soon-to-be victim of the villain (which you can see in the initial sketch) but I quickly flagged that it wasn’t going to work for the cover composition.

Once the cover was done, it was onto a layout draft and content outline.

Layout informs outline

Because of the limited space, I immediately got my layout sorted first:

• Double column A5 for the internal 2 pages.

• The back would probably be used for tables.

• 9pt Ictu Oculi for body copy (with approximately 11pt baseline grid).

  • Ictu Oculi is based on some older Italian typefaces. I wanted to work with something outside my normal rotation for this jam and I instantly fell in love with this typeface.

• 12pt Extra Bold Ictu Oculi for headers.

• I messed around with the cover font for a while, but settled on Thorsa.

I always write directly into layout if I can, it beats squeezing some words from a text document into layout later.

From the draft, I could roughly gauge how much space I had to play with. I sectioned off the top half(ish) of the first internal page for a map.

At this point I made a rough judgement:

• Internal pages had space for a quick intro and 10 terse locations plus one bigger statblock and a magic item, the Crown Forged of Lightning.

• I would use the back cover for a juicy d6 encounter table as well as the statblocks, plus a little table of hooks if I could squeeze them in.

I made a quick list of 10 location ideas and 6 encounter ideas.

Locations: Village, forest, bog, corpse pile, crow tree, crater, ruined tower, abandoned camp, cave, crypt.

Encounters: Other adventurers, cultists, paladins, electric draugr, a storm bird.

Then I got cracking on the first page.

Setup

I wanted to minimise the amount of pre-amble before the location keys as much as I could. To that end, the scenario intro is a mere 100 words long, offering a tight history and an in-media-res style start.

Something scary has woken up and everything is going to shit. It works. It’s Borg-a-licious. It’s pulpy.

The ‘procedures’ section is even more sparse: it assumes you know how to run an OSR-y game and gives you only the bones of what you need to run travel and encounters, plus it has a simple escalation mechanic:

With that done, I was confident I could get 10 locations in. So it was time to map.

Mapping

Map wise, I wanted something that would indicate a bit of perspective into the distance and to build in some texture. I’ve tried to love drawing more classic-styled line-art mapping but I keep on coming back to painting, so I embraced that here and used some white lines where needed.

I settled on a pointcrawl because I think they work well for spaces of this scale and I wanted something that would sit easily in this funky perspective.

The pointcrawl connectivity was simple to come up with: lots of loops but some critical segmentation points. The junction at 3 between 5 and 6 is pretty critical, whilst the crater (5) acts as a kind of hub point. Now I was ready to write some location keys!

Terse keys

For this, I had to keep things lean: most keys are around 60 words. I aimed to:

• Present a clear challenge, curiosity, or decision that the GM can convey quickly to players.

• Engineer my language so there’s still a sense of theme and place.

• Tie it all back into what’s happened in this region and what might yet happen.

Here I’ve given an opportunity for social interaction and an immediate way that the GM can pilot these cultists (they are welcoming). The meteorite is a little nod to some Appendix N inspirations, and adds a curiosity to the space. There are things going on here, and things that have happened recently. Stuff is moving.

I’m not trying to engineer high level game design (à la Inkvein) here. This is about making something that’s easy to run and that hooks players quickly.

Encounters

I wanted encounters to be a reasonably big component of this adventure (hence the 2-in-6 encounter chance per hour). Even if they take the most direct route to the Crypt with no delays, it’s likely you’ll get 2 encounters along the way.

There’s some implicit faction play too, each group/subject has some clear goals and motivations.

I also added in a d6 sub-table for each encounter so you can generate an activity for each subject, and freshen things up if you roll and encounter twice.

I had considered doing a spot illustration for each entry instead but:

• I tend to dislike doing tiny illustrations unless they are very useful

• I think the d6 sub-table has more value

The implicit faction play comes out even more with the ‘roll twice and combine’ entry. Things get pretty fun if the PCs, the paladins, and some cultists cross paths with each other.

Putting the statblocks in the encounter table works nicely for consolidating referencing and saving space in the main spread too.

Wrapping up: Hooks

Lastly I threw in a d4 hooks table, because I wanted this little adventure to be something you can grab and run after spending 10 minutes reading it.

These are simple and easy ways to give PCs a reason for why they are here. It makes for smoother entry into this as a one-shot. Each is designed to appeal to a broad class of players if the GM wants to tailor the hook:

• Treasure is for your classic players who have that ‘adventurer’ mindset.

• Oath is for the roleplayers who need internal character motivation.

• Freedom is for us sickos who want a horrible reason to get into something more horrible. Also a nod to Rotblack Sludge.

• Devotion is for the contrarians who would immediately think can we become the scary storm lady’s minions? Yes, yes you can.

Reflection

I think this is probably the best very short adventure I’ve written, especially in terms of something to be grabbed and read 10 minutes before a session starts. If I was running a convention game from my own catalogue I’d seriously consider using this one!

It was really fun to make this: there was much less pressure than Inkvein and the constraints meant that I had to keep things simple.

I had a kind of strange reaction to this insight: You know you don’t need rules to do this right? If the players want that then they should make it happen, they don’t need mechanics for this?

This might sound like I’m about to go on a rant defending old-school play. Not quite. This got me thinking about the types of play that humans can engage in, and how different games focus on different kinds of play.

Let’s get cracking.

Level 1: Directed play

Imagine you’re a kid on a playground and you use whichever piece of equipment a parent/guardian tells you to. You use the equipment exactly as they tell you. They point at the slide and tell you how to use the slide, you go get on the slide, and you slide down it.

That’s directed play: an exterior force, the rules or a GM, not only tells you exactly how to play but also tells you what to play with. It’s the most basic form of play.

Level 2: Play as selected but also as intended

You’re a kid on a playground again, but this time you choose which bits of equipment to use. The adult is still going to tell you how to use the slide though: if you pick the slide, you’re going to climb up to the top using the steps and slide down.

At level 2, you might be picking what kind of character ability to use in a tactical combat game or engaging with a specific procedure by choice (perhaps a carousing procedure for example). You’re picking what to play with, but you play with the thing in a way as expected by an exterior force.

Level 3: Free play within an intended domain

You’re on that playground again, but now you aren’t beholden to the specific intended function of the equipment. You’re using the playground equipment as a free climbing jungle, with only the physics of the world, the equipment, and your body, limiting what you can do. You walk up the front of the slide, you do backflips assisted by the swing chains.

You’re still engaging with the equipment in a physical way, which is the domain of the intended play of the equipment, but you’re not beholden to artificial rules: only the laws of the world itself, rather than a rulebook.

This is the domain where the character sheet falls away: you ask to do something in a game, the GM judges if it is reasonable, and it gets resolved as needed, with procedures being used if they are helpful and suited.

Level 4: Self-actualised play

You’re on the playground, but decide you want to add another layer. You’re going to pretend to be an explorer as you climb the equipment, in fact you’re going to label each piece of equipment as some kind of landmark to be found.

Nothing about the equipment or its design explicitly tries to invite this, but you make it happen anyway. This is self-actualised play: when a person or people playing a game expand the scope and domain of a game without instruction or intention embedded in the game as presented.

You’re still limited by the physics of the world, but you’re stepping outside the intended domain of play.

In Mothership, this is exactly what Quinn’s players could have done. They could have actively built relationships between their PCs whilst playing the game despite there being no rules for it. They could have made it happen.

The function of each level

Level 1 play is ideally minimised in an rpg because it lacks agency, unless the objective is to limit agency as a form of horror, narrative theme, or fail state. Level 1 is often featured in fail states: you walked into the trap so now you will make a save. You don’t get to choose, the GM calls for the save and now you have to engage with the mechanic.

Level 2 is often the focus of ‘tactical’ rpgs or rpgs where the aim is to encode as much of the game as possible in the rules. You’ll also see this used in rpgs focused on level 3 when they actually want to not care about something. Combat in OSR games is often a level 2 form of play: it’s a procedure. That’s because they don’t care about combat so much.

Level 3 is what we see in lighter games, and is probably best exemplified by Free Kriegsspiel Revolution (FKR) since it minimises mechanical rules to the extreme. It enables, to my mind, the most diegetic form of play: the physics of the fictional world are above the rules. Rules are not provided for swimming because a GM can make a better judgement on swimming than the rules can (in theory).

This is often a junction point: many people who like level 2 play struggle with level 3 play because it is less calculable and asks for a player to understand a world rather than a set of rules. It’s also higher trust: it requires players to trust a GM above the rules.

Level 4 play is when the game table self-actualises and adds their own forms of play on top of the rules or game world that is presented by a GM. In the case of Mothership: there are no rules for character relationships.

Level 4 play is deciding you want that and building it through play. For many people, they end up needing to construct something extra at level 2 to make this work, but others don’t need explicit rule frameworks and are happy to make things happen diegetically.

A conflict explanation?

In retrospect, I think a lot of player (and GM) incompatibilities I’ve witnessed come down to people having preferences for these different levels of play. Particularly what I’ll call the level 2 - level 3 gap. This is one of the biggest differences I can see in systems: some focus on level 2, some on level 3.

Players who like level 2 style play struggle with the openness of level 3, and level 3 preferring players struggle with the constraints and anti-diegesis of level 2.

No game is purely one or the other, but games often lean one way.

Level 4 play is often what I think is lacking when you hear stuff like ‘I didn’t really like this game because it didn’t support me in this’. My instinctual thought is: did you try to make it emerge diegetically from your game?

And often the answer is no if the players prefer level 2 fun, because they require an explicitly stated structure to engage with something.

Mothership is a level 3 play focused game: and so it expects that if you want some other flavours in there, you’re going to add it via what I’ll call diegetic invocation.

Diegetic invocation

Diegetic invocation: The act of players engaging diegetically with the world to create forms of play not currently in the game.

If you want there to be a homebase-building aspect to your game but it doesn’t have rules for it, you can still make it happen by diegetically focusing on that objective. Now of course, your GM might say no if you attempt to build a homebase, and I’d respect that.

There are no rules for homebase-building in Mothership, but I’m sure plenty of Wardens would comfortably arbitrate that happening in their games without inventing a whole level 2 system that gave you specific rules for doing homebase-building. They can use what the rules already give them plus judgement to honour that diegetic invocation.

Not a strict model, just a framework for thoughts

This isn’t an attempt at a formal theory here, just a way of thinking about the ways in which we play. I think it might be useful for understanding:

• Rules/system design.

• Preferences of players.

• Why people have such different experiences with rulesets and adventures.

I’m going to keep this in mind when looking at rpg stuff in the future. Now I know what was behind my thoughts about Quinn’s comment. His table doesn’t have a preference for level 4 play: they want level 2 structures. And that explains a lot!

Reza Afshar

There’s a specific body of Reza’s work that interests me: this minimalistic, graphical, composition-first style.

Something about the apparent simplicity but immaculate care of execution speaks to me, it inspires me. As I explore a new phase of illustration myself, this is leading me in interesting directions.

Witches of the Wenderweald

released WotW at the end of June and it’s unhinged that it’s this good. The art: some of the best in the industry right now. The vibes: dark and horrid. The rules: a great spin on old-school play, drawing from some great rulesets and with that unique Odinson flavour.

This is the standard we are all aiming for!

Explorers Design: Great Book Covers

Clayton over at Explorers continues to demonstrate great taste and also scalpel-sharp understanding of graphic design in the ttrpg world. His breakdown of 15 awesome covers has given me some guidance on improving my cover craft.

Also, make sure you vote for Explorers Design at the ENNIEs. Clayton deserves it.

Running Play-by-Post in public

I’ve made my first foray into running games in public by GMing a small Play-by-Post (PbP) game on the Murkdice discord (where many other wonderful GMs are running PbP).

I’ve been running Transit Precinct 45 for Death in Space, which I might do a kind of overview of once I’ve digested how the game has gone. It’s a small 4-page adventure, with a 10 location adventure site (a small prison station).

Right now we’re in the early stages of the players gathering intel and gearing up to extract a prisoner from the adventure site. It’s the kind of ‘forward planning’ phase I really enjoy running for a shorter adventure.

Wrap-up

That’s it for this week, a little lighter compared to last time but I’m still trying to get my creative ducks in a row - so I’m consuming things slowly. I’ll be sure to do a breakdown of my favourite Appendix N entries soon!

A long-abandoned boat, partly claimed by the estuary, covered in seaweed, and splitting apart.

Looking at it, I felt a desire to peer inside, for no other reason than being curious. It was something forgotten. Something left behind. It had history, though I would likely never know what its past actually was. It was weird. Why had it been left here?

There was no treasure within (certainly nothing of capital value). I also wasn’t going to ‘unlock’ an ability or level by undertaking exploring it.

Now, I didn’t go climb in because:

• I wasn’t dressed for it (I lacked the equipment).

• I haven’t explored boat wrecks before (I lacked the training). I’m more familiar with open water and mountains.

• I didn’t have the time.

But if I had those things (and my partner, who is equally explore-y, came along as a teammate), we would have probably climbed in and taken a look.

This is an old-school rpg blog right? What the fudge am I on about?

The drive I’m describing is the drive to explore: not for money, not for level ups, not for objective gains. To explore for its own sake. To discover.

And my feeling is that some of the best old-school play is driven by this mindset. It’s not about levelling up. It’s not about unlocking new abilities. It’s not about trying to shape the world as part of a power fantasy.

In games where it’s all about going to new places, the best version of those games are driven by a pure want to explore.

Exploration is the incentive. To witness a fictional world, to discover it, and to overcome challenges to allow you to see more of it. To become part of it.

That makes for the best old-school games.

I’m sure someone has done this before but I haven’t seen any articles or videos on it so I figured I’d share this technique: the step-dice rumour table.

Basic concept

The idea is simple. You make a table of rumours but rather than rolling on the whole thing, you begin by rolling a smaller die on it. Take the Inkvein rumour table: it’s got 20 entries (so it can scale to d20) but begins on a d4.

You don’t have to go this big. Depending on the size of your adventure, something like an 8 entry table using a d4 → d6 → d8 chain is probably going to be the sweet spot for most.

In Inkvein, the dice size increases each time the party ask for rumours (typically something that’s going to happen days apart). But you don’t have to do it that way.

You could use fixed time periods as a reason to increase die size e.g. increasing it once per in-game week. Or you could use the increasing die size as a kind of ‘social score’ that the PCs have with the community that they are trying to get rumours from.

So. Why do we do this?

Osmosis

If all intelligence is available at once, it feels kind of weird. With games that are centred around exploration, we’re assuming the PCs are one of the few people who are looking around an uncharted space. If all rumours are possible up front, that means one of two things.

Either the rumours only cover the easy to access portions of the ‘exploration-zone’. This shouldn’t hold true as time goes on: NPCs and creatures should be looking around as time progresses.

Or… the rumours cover more of the ‘exploration-zone’ than they really should. They don’t reflect how unexplored the space should be.

We can mitigate this by gating rumours about harder-to-reach locations behind the step dice chain. It takes time for those rumours to come into play.

This simulates how information naturally spreads in communities, allowing the communities that PCs are trying to get rumours from to feel more realistic in how their knowledge changes over time.

Curation

Structuring our rumour tables like this allows us to be quite intentional about how we hand out information. The first d4 hooks in Inkvein are each a way or hints as to how to get in touch with a faction. That’s no accident.

Rather than giving some vague hint about a secret deep down in the dungeon, Inkvein starts off with clear gameplay hooks that give players a way to get immediately stuck in. But the table quickly branches out into more ambiguous information that is easier to action when the players actually know the setting a bit better!

Updates are a key idea

Inkvein also prompts GMs to replace spent entries with faction events (of which there are a possible 40) as a way to distribute diegetic information about what might be happening on the bigger scale of things.

Wrap-up

The step-dice gets maxed out after a few uses, but it does a critical job in the earlier portion of a game:

• It simulates the natural gathering of information in the community, reflecting the low number of people going into the ‘exploration zone’.

• It curates intelligence for players to make the start of the game a bit easier but also rewards their mastery of the setting as things open up.

Next time you’re gearing up to run a setting, consider using a step-dice rumour table (or multiple of them!).

Hilda

I’m not new to Hilda, but I finally watched the second half of the last season. And my word, what an ending. In all senses too: the writing was largely strong and the environment artists went off the freaking chain. Perhaps my only wish would be to have had them commit to a bit of true tragedy at the end, just a bit.

Hilda walks a fine line between light fairy tale charm and being a bit sinister. It also does a good job of exploring the depths of family relationships.

TTRPG wise, it’s great inspiration for effective and lean world-building, creature design, NPC design, and excellent art.

Jeffrey Alan Love

I only recently became aware of Jeffrey’s work, and I for one feel like I was robbed for not knowing about him sooner. Not only does he have a trove of amazing illustrations in a potent graphic style, but his graphic novels are filled with terse and evocative stories.

I acquired ‘Notes from the Shadowed City’, a delightfully esoteric tale about a traveller who documents magical swords. I kind of wish more TTRPG settings felt like this book, with less focus on exhaustive lore and more on creating atmosphere and intrigue (kind of like MÖRK BORG, now I think on it).

Salt, Spit & Silver

I got my order in for this MÖRK BORG zine as soon as it was available in the Pit Trap Shop. And I was not disappointed.

Johan has done a great job with the writing here, it’s concise and inspiring but the tables cover a lot of ground for each class. And the art by Kat Martin is chefs kiss.

I’m one of those psychos who normally runs Borg classless but if I were to deploy the classes… you can bet this zine is hitting the table.

Free sketching/art purge

I’ve never really just made art to mess around, not truly without pressure. I figured it might be a good tool for stress management, so I’ve started giving it a go: letting some stuff out a bit more directly onto the page.

I’m actually pretty happy with what’s come out so far. They are raw, unpolished, but I enjoy that.

Maybe I’ll do some more. This might make for a funky zine one day.

Salvage Union Starter Set

Leyline Press completed digital delivery of the Salvage Union (SU) Starter Set in May! I’ve read through most of the content and I’m very impressed.

The new campaign, Reclamation of the Wastes, looks excellent. I’ve enjoyed Panny’s previous adventure writing (False Flag) but it feels like it has reached another level here. There’s also excellent infrastructure in the module for onboarding new mediators.

There’s 3 pamphlet adventures included in the ‘asset pack’ as well. While I was excited for them, I didn’t quite anticipate the gap they did a great job of filling in the SU ecosystem: easy to deploy one-shots.

While I do dig the one-shot in the core book, these 3 pamphlets offer a great alternatives for introducing new players to SU. Particularly if you wanted to run a small and cohesive campaign, you can run them in a series.

I can’t wait to get my hands on the physical box.

Wrap-up

It was quite nice to just shoutout some cool stuff in a MurkMail. There was a time when I used to put more recommendations in, but I think I found tacking them onto a game-y idea article a bit jarring. Maybe I’ll do some round-ups like this now and then going forward.

An eternal question of GM prep and adventure design is ‘how much should I write?’ It’s a tough question, but it does matter.

Really when we say ‘how much should I write’, we aren’t talking about whether to write 10 dungeon rooms or 30 dungeon rooms. We are wondering how much to write for discrete chunks of information: location descriptions, NPCs, interesting artifacts, and so on.

A simple answer might be ‘as much as you need’ - and whilst there is merit to that response - for word-addicted maximalists like myself, an upper limit is helpful because my answer to ‘as much as you need’ might be 2 sides of A4 to describe one magic sword. That’s bad, even for a home game.

A good way to derive this kind of limit is practical considerations, rather than artistic ones.

Reading speed

A meta-study (of 190 different studies) puts the average speed of silent reading in English at 238 words per minute for non-fiction (which I feel is applicable for the mix of fictional and technical information in a location key or NPC description). So this discussion only applies to ttrpg stuff written in English.

The maximum any sensible GM would want to spend reading mid-session is 60 seconds (during which they are probably trying to keep talking as well). So we should keep a chunk of information (an NPC, a location description) small enough to be read in 60 seconds.

The study says we can read 238 words in 60 seconds but let’s round up to a memorable figure: 250 words seems like a solid limit for a piece of discrete information like a location, sub-location, magic item, etc.

It’s important to note that ‘nested’ information doesn’t apply here: if a magic item present in a dungeon room has a description of its own, and that combined with the location description brings the total to 400 words, I don’t think that matters too much since they have a fair amount of separation from each other.

Caveats

There’s some important holes in the boat here, or at least things I can imagine could be holes:

• GMs, I would guess, have a higher words-per-minute reading speed on average, compared to the general population. But I think it’s still good to work with a ‘standard reading speed’.

• GMs are likely to skim-read during a session, to speed up the rate at which they can deploy the information presented. That’s great, but we should plan for those not skim reading.

Attention span

In an APA interview transcript with Dr Gloria Mark from University of California, Dr Mark mentions that her most recent research (at the time) indicated that the average attention span of someone engaging with a screen is around 40 seconds.

Now given that this is a hobby done for fun, it feels like 60 seconds is ok. But this is further reason to not ask someone to spend more than 60 seconds digesting a chunk of information. If a dungeon room takes 2 minutes to read, you are going to lose quite a few people on the way vs. something that takes 30 seconds.

I think this reinforces 250 words as a good upper limit.

Visual space

Discrete chunks of information need to be viewable in their entirety without scrolling or page flipping. Whilst in physical format and wide digital screens you can view spreads, it’s good to design for the viewing of a single page.

Location keys or NPC entries that cross pages always feel jarring to me, even if I’m viewing a book in spreads.

Note: If you aren’t using a notebook or some digital page style format, and instead use something like a markdown file in Obsidian, instead, consider a ‘page’ to be your view window.

Examples

Let’s look at an offender under these advisories: Call of Cthulhu’s The Haunting.

Whilst plenty of chunks of information are under 250 words, there are a few that greatly exceed it, like Room 3 in the house coming in at around 500 words.

I am aware this includes Keeper advice call-outs, but it is still text that the location key expects you to parse in-game.

Something I noted as well was that even on an iPad with a great screen, this was hard to read when the whole page was viewed, the text is too small. The Haunting also commits the crime of having a single location description split across pages.

Now I’ve run the Haunting, and I can confirm both of these occurrences are a pain. I don’t necessarily mind entries that exceed 250 words if they really justify using that much text. For me, this doesn’t.

I had a quick look at some bits of official 5e adventures too, and I think it’s fair to say it was common to see location keys exceeding 500 words without good justification.

I think this is something that applies to home game notes too: when I have let chunks of information spill between pages or not be easily viewed as one chunk on a screen, I cause myself problems. Exceeding 250 words without serious reason to has caused me over-writing issues as well.

By comparison, Yochai Gal’s Trouble in Twin Lakes keeps entries under 250 words and is much easier to read when viewed as a whole. I’ve just picked one random page but all the pages in CAS-1 are good examples.

Summary

Where possible, keep chunks of information:

• Under 250 words

• To one page and ensure they are readable when viewed as a whole.

Knowing it takes the average reader of English a minute to read around 250 words is a really good thing to know, because who wants to read for over a minute at the table and keep their players waiting?

I know the life of having to write a lot. But Inkvein has been my biggest writing endeavour and it forced me to figure out a way to write in large volumes regularly.

Folks have been asking me about how to write with regularity. I can’t say that this is a good approach, it’s just my approach. And it probably comes across as weird. But maybe it will help you if you are looking to put more words on the page, whether that be TTRPG stuff, blogging, fiction, or something else.

Daydream

Daydream as often as you can.

I daydream a lot. I probably spend at least 10 minutes of every hour (often much more) actively daydreaming in a fictional space. I intentionally explore ideas and fantastical spaces in my mind as often as I can.

I paint scenes in my head, I imagine what it’s like to stand in a world that isn’t our own, I think about what a tree might have seen in the hundreds of years it has stood. That kind of nonsense. Imagination is a muscle: if you train it every hour, creative writing is a lot easier.

Delve for strong feelings

Draw from what consistently moves you.

I’m a big believer that good writers fuel their work with strong emotions, and they often have an emotional language that defines their work.

I identify things that consistently move me, stuff where it feels like the only way I can make it settle is to do something with it creatively, and I dig deep into it. Things like:

• Climate change

• Human arrogance

• Anti-intellectualism

• Failures of empathy

• The power of silence

• The weight of emptiness and isolation

• The beauty of nature and architecture

• Exploitation of the powerless

• The fragility of the human mind and the body

• The psychology of desperation and greed

• The horror of violence and war

• How untrustworthy people are, especially those with power

• Contrasts of scale

• The burden of regret

• Failure

It’s pretty clear my ‘palette’ tends to be about fear, disgust, scepticism, nature, and negative reflections on human behaviour. It’s about collecting the ugliness I see in the world like scrap metal and hammering into a weird word-sculpture.

These are better for me than explicit media references as a basis for writing projects. Feelings for reference material are fleeting, and references are sometimes too specific. I try to hold onto something that’s deep set within my head, that reaches far and wide.

Find what will always move you and channel it into words.

As a recent example, I visited a city (that shall rename nameless to protect its identity). I was reminded of how much cities make my skin crawl. I recalled of all the unpleasantness I see in them as I walk their streets, how they feel like a stomach digesting crowds of people without their knowing.

And I felt compelled to do something with that feeling in the future, to create something that conveys the way dense urban landscapes make me feel.

Those are the sorts of things I draw from. Bad stuff is always happening in the world, but it felt like a lot of things slid backwards in 2025 and 2026, or maybe I just became more aware of them. The way that made me feel was poured into Inkvein.

Doodle constantly (with words)

Always be writing (but use broken language freely).

You don’t have to write complete sentences to get started. Often, throughout the day, I will grab a notebook and scribble some words down.

Great bridges of metal. Rust falls like snow under the arches. It stings.

This isn’t about recording ideas. If the idea is strong enough, I will remember it. It’s about using those imagination muscles and committing the exercise to paper. Link this up with daydreaming and you’ll be in a background creative flow pretty much all day, even as you are busy with other stuff.

One of the first things I wrote regarding Inkvein was: “What would you give for a drop of Ink?” It makes no sense in isolation, but it captured an unsettling feeling that I knew would be the core of the work.

Dig a hole, dive in

Get so immersed you have to write.

I’ve identified strong feelings that aren’t leaving. I’m daydreaming and ‘doodling’. Which means I’m digging myself a deep fictional hole that I can jump into, a rich headspace that will, in a way, consume me.

I jump in. I let all my ideas and feelings on the themes and concepts that are spinning around my head coalesce.

The fictional headspace I’ve made feels so real that I need to do the closest thing to making it real and exploring it: writing about it (and painting/drawing it). It becomes a compulsion, rather than a choice. And that keeps me writing for multiple days a week for months on end.

That’s it. That’s how I write. No specific routine, no media reference searching, no set procedure.

See. Told ya it was weird.

Far-reaching connections - they are what separates a good dungeon from a great dungeon. From the classic use of a key and a chest with large spatial separation between them, to the complex designs of modern modules and distributed puzzles, building in clusters of connections between locations is something you want to think about when preparing adventure spaces.

But sometimes your mind goes blank. You need a push to get the creative juices going. Despite this being a naturalistic design problem, randomness can help us out a bit.

I turn to this d20 table of location connections, for a general idea of how I might add some more connective tissue between some places.

It’s not exhaustive, but there’s enough general categories in here to help me when I need a little push to come up with some creative connections.

d20 Location Connections

1: Alternative transport. A non-typical means of transport links the locations. Portals, teleporters, a high speed maglev, secret passages.

2: Separated allies. Allied NPCs have been separated and seek to reunite. Lost travellers, prisoners and those seeking to free them.

3: Adversaries. NPCs seeking to find other NPCs with ill intent, or NPCs who work against each other. An assassin and their target, a thief and those they stole from.

4: Locks and keys. The classic. A multi-key door and the keys for it, sets of keycards and restricted areas, a passphrase for an enchanted door.

5: Fractured knowledge. A truth that is broken into pieces but can be revealed by recovering the pieces. Fragments of a tablet that records a piece of important history.

6: Object components. An object that has been split into pieces but can be reconstructed. Shards of a wizard staff, pieces of a spaceship engine.

7: Puzzle. Spread the parts of a puzzle between the locations. Secret levers that must be pulled in all locations, ciphers in each location that form an answer.

8: NPC(s) and goals. Simple really, NPCs and their objectives. Thieves and the vaults they want to rob, two knights and the sword they want to claim.

9: Environmental manipulation. Mechanisms for manipulating the environment in other locations. Valves that change the water level in a dungeon, generators that power lighting on different floors.

10: Clues and mysteries. The locations contain clues that hold an answer to a mystery. A murder weapon, a body, and a murderer - in different locations.

11: Obstacles and solutions. Some locations contain solutions to obstacles in others. One location causes a disease while another holds a cure.

12: Consistent hazard. The same kind of hazard or threat is in the locations, and repeated encounters with it allow players to master dealing with it. One room has a pit trap, another has multiple.

13: Faction(s). These locations have the same faction(s) present. Why? Shrines to the same deity and their acolytes, data banks guarded by SecOps under strict orders.

14: Similar opportunities. Similar opportunities are presented in the locations. Treasure chests hidden in similar ways, same model computer terminals with useful data.

15: Escalation triggers. The locations have connected triggers for an escalating danger. Unstable reactor cores found in multiple labs, sets of beast pens across a dungeon which can be broken open.

16: Points of safety. The locations all offer some form of safety. Reinforced chambers with strong doors, safehouse apartments.

17: Function. The locations all have the same function or linked functionality. Prison cells, windmills, factories, distributed computing centres.

18: Causes and effects. The situation in some locations is being caused by situations in others. A building without power and a malfunctioning substation.

19: Cultural/historical. The locations are linked through cultural or historical significance. Burial sites and shrines to the dead, protest street art murals.

20: False connection. A red herring. These rooms seem linked but actually are not. Similar iconography on all the walls but no real meaning behind it.

This is a petty grudge I’ve grown to hold against a type of communication and marketing that has become a big part of the ttrpg world. I don’t want you to take it too seriously. If you think it’s ridiculous, revel in it’s ridiculousness.

But I am sort of trying to make a point too.

How many times have you looked at a ttrpg crowdfunding project or product page and been served media comparisons and references within the first 20 seconds of reading the description?

For me, it’s a lot. And I am sick of it. Caveat: I know some projects are aiming for emulation of references or are actual IP projects. They are excused from this grumbling.

This is also coming up more and more in gaming groups: you get handed a list of touchstones or vibe references before playing a game. I don’t like that either.

Why? I’m glad you asked.

Nostalgia reliance

There’s something empty to me about relying on touchstones or vibe references to convey the concept of your system, adventure, or toolkit. To me, it says one of the following:

• The concept actually isn’t interesting enough to hold its own. So when it’s introduced it needs to reference other material that is already loved to convince you it’s worth your time.

• The creators/publisher haven’t thought about how they could describe their work in a way that conveys what’s cool about it effectively, in a way that demonstrates its novelty without comparison.

• You’re attempting to play to the prior interests of your audience as a way to secure sales or interest (see “my 5e game is like Skyrim, come play!”)

This is not to say you shouldn’t credit your inspirations. But imagine writing a novel and when attempting to briefly describe, it you just start listing other media.

Gross.

Tell me what the thing is. Not what it is like.

The same goes for your home game. Don’t give me a list of references before we start playing. Tell me what your game world is about. Tell me what we’re trying to create at the table in your own words.

Don’t attempt to build vibes and atmosphere by proxy, actually build them. Write an intro document or handout for your game that conveys them, or have a discussion with your table before play.

A weird form of soft exclusion?

What’s the best way to put me off a product or game? Have it heavily rely on references I’ve never engaged with to convey what it’s about. I have an experience that demonstrates this in practice.

I know nothing about mecha fiction. Zero. Naught. Nadda. A huge number of mech games sell themselves on comparisons to mecha media. So I never picked one up. Then I came across Salvage Union.

Salvage Union is its own thing. It doesn’t make calls to other media to convey its themes or nature. Its pitch didn’t rely on me having some kind of existing knowledge of certain franchises or works to understand what it was about. It felt accessible and interesting to me.

Does Salvage Union use inspiration from mecha media? Of course it does! You can read the inspirations and references in the books. But that’s where the inspirations belong: as a note inside the work itself.

The same goes for running a game with heavy referencing. We’re going to play something really inspired by the Witcher games!

Actually, I haven’t played the Witcher games. So when I sit next to someone at the table who has played the Witcher games and that touchstone is a big part of the game, it doesn’t feel great. I can’t lock in with the same precision. From the off, I might feel like I don’t belong at the table.

But if you keep that reference/inspiration from being declared immediately, entry to a game has a more even playing field.

It diminishes novel concepts

The expectation that ttrpg projects are sold on vibes and references has a pretty nasty side effect: more novel concepts that defy comparisons to other media suffer as a result. Audiences are inclined to go off comparisons alone rather than actually digesting the concept as it is.

Imagine if MÖRK BORG tried to describe itself by making comparisons to other media. It would rob the project of its identity. The same goes for Cairn.

This applies to home games too. Throwing references at your players can limit the creative capacity of your table. People can start thinking in railway tracks defined by that media list you’ve handed out.

There’s a misunderstanding, I think, that you can only build a cohesive table atmosphere by using media references. I humbly disagree: you can build it with your own words and table discussion. Touchstones are a shortcut that come with limitations and compromises.

Make your own thing. Don’t let your games be defined by a crib sheet of touchstones and references. Tell or hand your players something that conveys what the game is about on your own terms.

It doesn’t take much work, it’s fun to do, and your game will be better for it.

Shall I give it a go? Oh and spoiler: even if you aren’t writing for publication, this will help you prep better.

Quick note: By module, I also mean adventure, scenario, campaign, and other nouns for content that is prepared ahead of time to facilitate a game.

Gut instinct

For about half a year I’ve thought of modules as something like:

A technical manual of connected and interactive micro-fiction.

I think this can apply to pretty much any adventure: an OSR dungeon or a linear adventure path, or even the sparse scenario sheets you might see for a story game like Blades in the Dark (like Sean Nitter’s Gaddoc Rail).

We’re not going to zoom in on any particular style of play or design. I want this to apply as much to a Call of Cthulhu investigation as it does a Cairn adventure. Let’s dig into the different pieces of my definition.

Technical manual

Comprehension and instruction are part of a module. It needs to be understood and it also instructs the GM. Not necessarily on exactly what to do, but it does convey key info and may instruct them on how to respond to some player inputs. It might also tell them when to roll on encounter tables, for example.

The technical manual comparison is also apt because crucially I think any good adventure does not require you to comprehend all of its details simultaneously to use it. It can be read partially out of order as well, or skimmed before use in the field. It isn’t a novel: you shouldn’t need to read it in its entirety to understand it.

In fact, the function of a module demands that it functions in multiple orders. You have to be able to deploy the information in different orders for players to have meaningful choices!

To summarise, modules:

• Facilitate comprehension

• Provide instruction

• Are flexible to different orders of reading

• Do not require full comprehension before use

Interactive micro-fiction

Whether describing places, people, cultures, organisations, events, or objects, the primary content of an adventure is micro-fiction. Whether it’s a full page of prose or a single phrase in a table, the ‘items’ in the technical manual are described in chunks of fiction.

These are written so as to function with some degree of independence. You do not need to read the whole book to understand each entry (more on this when we talk ‘connect’).

But it isn’t just micro-fiction: it’s interactive micro-fiction. It’s designed so that a group of people with shared imaginary space can push and pull at it.

This might be stated e.g. if a creature pulls the lever, X happens. Alternatively, it might be implied in a question, like in the Blades score above e.g. a trap is laid by your enemies, who is gunning for you? The nature of the interaction isn’t something we will specify because different modules have different interaction modes.

To summarise, modules:

• Contain entries of micro-fiction that describe parts of an imagined space

• Have entries that are not reliant on the whole book to be understood

• Have entries which are designed to be interactive in an imagined space

Connected together

The micro-fiction is actually attempting to build a wider imaginary space. It often features connections between the micro-fiction. NPCs have relationships, locations have geographical connections, and so on.

The micro-fiction, whilst partially independent, is still connected to the wider landscape that the module describes. There’s connective tissue between the entries that form the whole.

In fact, there has to be this interconnection between the micro-fiction entries - otherwise, the imagined space is too fragmented and the GM has to glue it together themselves. Which is something more like a toolkit or setting guide.

To summarise, modules:

• Draw connections between their micro-fiction entries to produce a cohesive imaginary space

How do we make an adventure?

Now we’ve worked all that out, we can define the process of making a module:

The creation of interactive micro-fiction entries which connect together to form a cohesive imaginary space, written and arranged such that they can be comprehended without total understanding of the whole text.

You might note how this doesn’t really reference anything mechanical. I think my soft claim here is that a module doesn’t intrinsically require game mechanic references in its writing (see system neutral adventures) because micro-fiction can be interactive without mechanical references.

Module writing skills

This thinking helps us pin down some key module writing skills:

• Micro-fiction: We should learn to write compelling fiction in a constrained space! If our micro-fiction isn’t interesting, the module won’t be. This applies whether you are publishing or only your players are going to see your prep.

• Interaction: We should learn to write our fiction to invite and support interaction in a shared imaginary space. This is the difference between fiction and a game.

• Connection: We should learn how to connect our micro-fiction together to create a wider and cohesive imagined space. Otherwise, the imagined space is disjointed.

• Comprehension: We should learn to structure our micro-fiction so it is easy to comprehend and useable without having to know the whole module. Otherwise users have to memorise a whole book/you have to memorise all your prep!

• Instruction: Where needed, we should provide clear instruction on how the micro-fiction behaves (e.g. what happens if you pull the lever, how do encounter rolls work in this module). This is a manual, not a fiction book. Even if you are just writing for your home game, you know there’ll be a moment where you look at your notes and go ‘errrrrrrr what did I mean?’

I think these hold regardless of what kind of module you are making. These are the 5 broad skills that I think are key to making a good module and prepping good stuff for your table. By identifying them, I think it makes it easier to assess where our craft needs work.

About 5 years ago, Luke Gearing wrote a blog post called Mechanisms as Abstraction. It has become an infamous piece of ttrpg design thinking, and comes up pretty often in game design discourse.

In essence, it argues that a game isn’t actually about what it has rules for. Gearing suggests that because rules are a way to not need to make judgements at the table, the stuff they don’t cover is what we are really digging into when we play.

And I think there’s a lot of merit to this idea, the oft given example these days is how Mothership has no rules for hiding because it wants you talk a lot about hiding in play rather than relying on a rule to shortcut discussion.

But something that always disgruntles me is claims like: See! DnD 5e isn’t about combat because look at all its rules for combat!

Anyone who’s got their thinking cap on half-straight knows that’s not true. Well, I have an idea. It’s not just about what we abstract into rules and what we don’t: it’s about the complexity of the abstraction and the complexity of the matters left to the table.

2-factor abstraction model

We’re going to use 2 factors to model what a game ‘is about’ vs. ‘isn’t about’:

• Coded vs free: Essentially whether the game has rules for something. OSE has rules for swinging a sword (coded). It does not have rules for brewing potions (free).

• Complex vs simple. Whether the rules or a judgement is simple or complex to use/make. The rules for combat in 5e are complex: they offer a lot of gameiness and take up table time to execute. The rules for combat in Into the Odd are simple: they are quick to execute. The judgement of whether a character can jump a gap is simple, the judgement of how they make a healing potion is complex.

This gives us 4 zones on the chart.

I’m going to make the following case:

• Games are about their complex rules and complex judgements. If a game has detailed and time-consuming rules for something, the game will focus on those aspects. Complex topics the game doesn’t have rules for but that it implies will come up by nature of the game are also focus points. That’s because they require time and thought to make judgements on.

• Simple rules are abstractions that remove focus from that topic. Mechanisms make a game not about something if they are simple and quick: if they don’t take up table time.

• Matters that are simple to judge are not the focus of a game. If a game with firearms doesn’t have rules for reloading, the game doesn’t become about reloading firearms. Reloading is an easy judgement, and remains consistent.

To make the case, we’re going to plot some games on this chart. We’ll pick 4 rules they have, one for each quadrant.

Example 1: Cairn

• Cairn has extensive procedures for exploration and supply tracking. These are a focus point of the game. The rules support you in making it a central part of the game: it is about exploration and resource management.

• Cairn doesn’t have specific rules for disarming traps, but implies traps are part of playing Cairn. It doesn’t have a procedure for disarming traps because it expects disarming traps to be a complex ‘in-world’ discussion. The players investigate the trap, ask the GM questions, and come up with a diegetic plan on how to disarm it. The GM might call for a save if needed. It’s a complex discussion that needs to be had on a case-by-case basis. So it becomes a focus of the game.

• Cairn has simple rules for combat and violence. That’s because it wants a quick resolution tool: it means combat is abstracted away and isn’t the focus of the game because it can be executed quickly.

• Cairn doesn’t have specific swimming and climbing rules. But these are easy to make quick judgements on when players are exploring/travelling, so their absence doesn’t define the game.

Example 2: Mothership

• Mothership has extensive rules for stress and sanity. Imagine trying to claim Mothership wasn’t about the mental toll of horror! The mechanics are there to make it a focus of the game.

• Mothership doesn’t have rules for stealth. That’s because it expects this to be an at-the-table discussion and when enemies are often so dangerous, hiding is a natural consideration. Working out if someone is successfully obscured is a complex judgement: it takes time and therefore becomes a focus of the game.

• Reloading weapons has simple rules in Mothership. Which means you don’t worry about it much: Mothership isn’t really about firing guns that much.

• Mothership essentially has no carrying capacity rules (they are a ‘be reasonable’ type rule). The game isn’t about inventory restrictions as a result. Mothership is telling you it’s not about inventory management.

Example 3: Blades in the Dark

• Blades has a lot of rules on factions and controlling territory. It is telling you that factions and territory are a cornerstone of a Blades game, and giving you the tools to support that focus in-depth.

• Blades does not have rules on infiltrating and exfiltrating heist locations. That’s because it expects you to figure that out as the fiction unfolds, rather than following a specific procedure. But it’s complicated and unique to each heist: so the game focuses on that.

• Loadout and gear are simple in blades. There gear you can pick is literally on your character sheet and loadout levels are specified. What gear you pick doesn’t matter so much in Blades, equipment isn’t the cornerstone of play.

• Travelling around Duskvol is given no procedural detail. That’s because Blades doesn’t want you to care about that. It wants you to cut to the dramatic bits and locations!

Complexity is the secret ingredient

Claiming DnD 5e isn’t about combat because it has extensive rules for it is like claiming Ars Magica isn’t about casting spells… it’s a ridiculous claim.

Sure, some tables may decided to shift focus away from the more complex mechanics of a game, but they are making a choice to actively ignore/not utilise a large portion of what the designers intended for table-time to spent on.

You don’t write a combat system like 5e’s and not intend it to be used regularly, that would be unhinged! In summary:

Games are about the things they have complex rules for and about the complex judgements they regularly require (for which they lack rules).

That’s my armchair theory anyway.

In Quinns’ review of ’s Mythic Bastionland, Quinns asks for encounter balancing advice. In the OSR/NSR zone of the hobby, we often talk about how combat balance isn’t something to aim for.

There’s lots of reasons folks give for this (it’s not a new topic), but I’m going to come at it from the following angle: aiming for balance restricts the kinds of tactical situations and moral dilemmas you create at the table when violence happens. It restricts the probability space.

Fights that are ‘too hard’

We’re talking about encounters where defeating the opposition is either:

• Going to incur significant losses of some kind like PC deaths, NPC deaths, expenditure of critical resources, or permanent injuries.

• Outright impossible to achieve.

Why is this good? It forces your party to focus on survival or to decide what they are willing to sacrifice.

• If your party decide to retreat, now you have a gripping chase sequence as they flee from opposition that’s gonna chew them up if they don’t get away. This can be especially fun if combat is ongoing and attacks are being thrown back and forth along the way. You also have a persistent foe…

• If defeating these opponents is really important, this becomes an interesting choice for players. Perhaps an NPC the party cares about is being held hostage by stronger opposition. Do they take the risk anyway, knowing at least some of them will likely be killed?

Take a look at the Golseeper, from the Inkvein Quickstart Guide (which you can grab here).

In Mörk Borg terms, this thing is a potential nightmare for fresh characters. It’s got a ton of HP, good armour, and its attack might even 1-shot a couple of of PCs.

But there’s a few things that make this interesting.

First is that this creature gives players a chance to walk away: “If a creature behaves aggressively towards the Golseeper, it first lets forth a bellow as a warning, then mercilessly fights if the warning is not heeded.”

The other thing is that the danger this thing presents is telegraphed: “…a hulking four-legged Ink-thing, a Golseeper: broad and triangular skulled like a giant salamander, eyeless, tail-less, with long digits. It moves the rubble, too heavy for a human, at an agonising pace.” It moving the rubble flags its incredible strength.

This creature acts more like a trap. If the PCs set the trap off, they likely want to get out of dodge and a PC might die for the party’s error.

Fights that are ‘too easy’

In contrast, there can be encounters where the opposition will struggle to pose a significant threat to the party. This is interesting because:

• The party has a lot of decision making power. Do they slaughter everyone? Do they capture the opposition? This plays into the party’s reputation and speaks to their morality.

• The party doesn’t necessarily know that a fight will be easy. It can actually keep them on their toes to have combat not always be tough and keep them guessing. It feels more real.

• It makes combat a more valid option in terms of risk, which provides players with variety in their decision making process and a variety of situations.

By comparison to the Golseeper, the thief Sykri is little threat for a reasonably sized party.

And that’s interesting, because Sykri is searching for the location of a stash of loot. If the PCs help her find it, it would be all too easy to gut her and cut out her share of the loot. But whether they do that or not is an interesting question.

No balance doesn’t mean ‘unfair’

I think there’s often a misconception about what ‘don’t balance things’ means. No OSR/NSR GM is putting a group of level 1 PCs up against 2d6 adult red dragons unless they explicitly have the idea that a non-combat solution is the focus.

A GM wants to present challenges that clever players can overcome, not just mash PCs into the ground constantly.

What it really means is: combat is not a test you can assume you have a good chance of winning, nor a good chance of losing. Which is to say, that vs. the playstyles of grid-based tactical combat games or some trad/neo-trad games, the probability space of situations is typically much wider.

This isn’t a better way to play, but it demonstrates how removing balance in combat broadens the probability space. Which for many of us, is a positive feature!

So Chris, please never put encounter balancing guides in your books.