Woefully Encysted Creature

It's amazing. I love the hacky cartoons in the AD&D books.

I can't wait to get into this

Speak with Monsters: The Languages of AD&D and the Adventurous Linguist Language is a hot topic in D&D. You can refer back to my post from early last year , which also serves as a sort of bibliography of the many...

I wrote about the huge number of languages in AD&D, how every demihuman & humanoid is a linguist, capturing monsters to learn their languages, all the ways to speak languages you don't know, & whether any of this is fun game design:

Slay To Find Out In this week's Gazetteer, one of our favourite post-OSR games, DURF, gets expanded, Frogs cast a spell on you and what is better than Warhammer? Warhammer and model railways, obviously.

Put your feet up & skive your way through what remains of the working week with the Wyrd Science Gazetteer!

This week @emielboven.itch.io's DURF puts on some weight + loads of interesting stuff to check out, from Warhammer themed model railways through to a look at AD&D's horrific baby beaver trade

Exactlyyy...which is why I wouldn't put it past them to kill the pegasi & sell their eggs if they really need cash. Sometimes you dangle the Evil hook in front of them & just see what they do.

But I agree that most players probably won't have the stomach for this sort of thing. Me, on the other hand - if I'm playing an Evil character, I'm going beaver hunting. :)

(Obviously a Good ranger would come into conflict with an Evil assassin looking to sell beavers into slavery without the need for the rules to tell us so.)

If you follow the rules to the letter, paladins cannot associate with Evil characters at all, & will only do so with non-Evil Neutrals for a single expedition (this precludes thieves, assassins, & even druids). Interestingly, rangers have no such restrictions, even though they must be Good.

For every Good paladin or ranger, however, there is more than likely a Neutral or Evil thief or assassin. I can't imagine that (Neutral) druids would partake.

Oh yes, definitely. I think this is the behavior of solely Evil (& probably some Neutral) PCs. If a Good character wanted to sell baby giant beavers into slavery I would have to sit them down for a chat first lol.

...but I can't imagine why the Monster Manual would list the exact gold piece value of various monsters' children & eggs unless it was assumed that the player characters might occasionally take an interest in selling them.

I don't think there's anything in the rulebooks to suggest that PCs are or should be "generally" good or neutral in AD&D. It is definitely an assumption of the play culture nowadays (I can't speak to the play culture of the time)...

Banger post alert!

Also I now want an AD&D style bestiary in a Pokémon RPG

d100 - Monster Parts for Magical Reagents & Research C onfession Time: I’ve always found myself to be very fond of Spell Components, even though tracking such things is often a bit too fiddly...

All those scattered "Monster Parts" throughout the MM definitely informed our games. Inspired me to whip up some tables on the topic as well:
blog.d4caltrops.com/2022/03/d100... and blog.d4caltrops.com/2022/03/d100...

The Monster Economy of AD&D AD&D's most endangered creature. We all know that larger towns and cities will usually have a market for dragons . That is, it is generally ...

I wrote about the prevalence of monster poaching, egg-snatching, and giant beaver slavery in AD&D, why it's even more Evil than it sounds, & why that has kind of fun gameplay implications, plus some musings about how much you might be able to sell a mind flayer brain for.

It is interesting that he provides a % chance for non-humans to be multiclassed but doesn't do the same for humans being dual-classed

Rough Draft of Into the Odd(ish) and New Cover Art | Prismatic Wasteland Get more from Prismatic Wasteland on Patreon

A (not yet final) full TTRPG (top secret project) is available only for my Patrons (even those just throwing a single dollar at me monthly), along with some cover art for another project I'm slowly working on. Consider joining for this and MORE!
www.patreon.com/posts/rough-...

That is a possibility I hadn’t considered!

Warring Guilds and Rogue Assassins Plague the Streets of AD&D Thieves guilds and assassins guilds are ubiquitous in AD&D cities and towns. Both assassins and thieves are found on the DMG's city/town enc...

I wrote about the ubiquity of guilds of thieves and assassins in AD&D, why they might declare war on outsiders or each other, and how you can (& why you should) get the player characters mixed up in the middle! #AD&D #OSR

Review: Outlaws of the Iron Route — Prismatic Wasteland Reviewing one of the earliest adventures for 5th Edition D&D: how I would improve player agency and how my proposed fixes grind up against the play culture of 5e.

A review of one of the earliest official 5e adventures (but one you’ve never heard of) which also explores the 5e play culture of the time and whether you can “fix” an adventure with lots of fun aspects without subverting the intended play culture
#dnd #rpg #osr

Advanced Diseases and Diagnoses Adventuring is dangerous business. Dungeons are filled with monsters, tricks, and traps. The wilderness is littered with small armies of orc...

I wrote about the disease & parasitic infection, the under-discussed save or die effect which lurks not just in dungeons & the bites of monsters, but in cities, aboard ships, in the food adventurers eat, the water they drink, & the very air they breathe:

Image with black background of a figure holding a torch in a cave that looks like teeth with the Words Orestruck an adventure by Amanda P. out now

Today my new adventure Orestruck is officially released! Return to the Tannic Forest to confront monstrosities, both magical and mundane.

Itch weirdwonder.itch.io/orestruck
DrivethruRPG www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

@spacepenguinink.bsky.social spacepenguin.ink/collections/...

The Dungeon as Abandoned Zoo Very handsome man and much better blogger than me Forlorn Encystment recently put out  Adventurers Long For The Dungeon , which features the...

From the brilliant mind of Magnolia Keep homes a high-octane blogpost about monster rights abuses! @forlornencystment.bsky.social spoke about how adventurers built their own dungeons, and now I take that to its endpoint.

https://magnoliakeep.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-dungeon-as-abandoned-zoo.html

Bandwagon Roundup: The Appendices Ns Over 69 (!) bloggers came together for the largest bandwagon of the year and I round them all up for your perusal

A roundup of the biggest blog bandwagon ever: over 69 different bloggers wrote about their Appendices N and I collected and categorized them all for you
#osr #ttrpg

❤️

I've really been enjoying Forlorn Encystment's look through the AD&D DMG and this is another interesting analysis.

Encumbrance Image. A Green Dragon curled over a Hoard of Expensive Treasures, the larger ones each feature a call out recommending their weights in coins, but also the number and *types* of hands they require to carry.

Love the logistical Challenges Treasure can create at those lower levels. I even whipped this up to help *ease* my Players into the concept of Big, Bulky, or Fragile things taking up *more hands*:

This rules

This is a great morning read! It discusses a fundamental pillar of old school play & the proper management of it per Gygax.

Ive always found treasure retrieval early on to be the hardest part of a dungeon; you dont have a many porters, ponies, wagons, or henchmen yet, no bags of holding, etc.