Zedeck Siew

The sun dappled the ground, and the recent rainwater that filled the old hero's footprint. His stone is left alone. Staring at it I thought it seemed like a friendly face.

Sharon and I picked wildflowers for the friendly stone. We left an RM20 note on his nose, under a rock, as an offering.

2/2

Went up to Tanjung Tuan again today, with our friend Eric. Took him to see Hang Tuah's footprint. The shrine is no more---even the Malacca State Religious Dept signboard prohibiting idolatry is rusted, faded.

1/

The Eternal Empress by Amanda P. An adventure for Cairn and old school roleplaying games

Thank you to everyone who has checked out my new adventure The Eternal Empress! #osr

Be sure to read all the awesome new Appendix N jam adventures!

If you missed it: weirdwonder.itch.io/empress

Disgusted, the Lord of Hunters declared our land A POOR HUNT and NO SPORT AT ALL etc etc, and immediately quit the area, burrowing into the earth and departing.

Thus did I, Chimmy the Rat Knight, embody the virtue of bravery and save the realm from a giant spider by peeing my pants.

15/15

This blatant lie was proof of our collective poor spirit and villainy.

Spinjack began to laugh bitterly. "COWARD AND LIAR, YOU ARE THE BEST THIS LAND HAS TO OFFER?"

"Mama," one of the militiamen cried.

"Fight me, m-monster!" I said. And for effect (but also genuinely) I peed my pants.

14/

At the start of the adventure I'd appropriated the glaive and armour from the dead knight we found killed by the spider.

I held aloft this glaive now, and declared:

"Here, evidence of my m-might, the glaive I won from my last adversary in single combat!"

13/

We meet Spinjack the Spider at the cliffs. He is booming and bellowing: "WHERE IS MY HUNT? WHERE IS MY GIANT SNAIL?"

Our army is quivering in their boots.

I force my horse ahead.

"Lord S-spinjack, it is I, Chimmy the Rat Knight, champion of the realm! I c-challenge you to single combat!"

12/

Our scheme:

Sellen spends the night telling tales about the giant spider, spooking the troops;

Bella acts as herald, announcing me as the realm's greatest champion;

I, diminutive rodentlike Chimmy, march out at the head of our column as the world's worst war leader.

A poor showing all over.

11/

Relevant info we got:

Spinjack, Lord of Hunters, is hyper-focused on the thrill of a *Good Hunt*.

A scheme forms in my mind, inspired by our Seer's backwards example:

What if we are a hunt so poor he leaves our land in disgust?

What if the spirit of valour lives by embodying its opposite?

10/

As Bella and Sellen assembled an army, Kari and I sought out the Loathed Seer, who'd knighted Kari and was in town.

Weird lady! She was coiled around a self-propelled cart and politeness hurt her.

Honouring *this* Seer meant insulting her, spitting in her face.

9/

So our new plan was to head back to the capital, and:

(a) Assemble a militia to fight the spider in force;
(b) Do some quick research to see whether the spider had weaknesses at all.

8/

The were signs of another Myth, on those cliffs: trails of slime, that left cryptic runic text in their wake.

So we spun that into a story of a Humongous Snail. The spider bought our story, and stomped off in that direction, hungry for escargot.

7/

Leyntide was the capital of our realm. My companions realised that in my panic, I was about to direct a spider kaiju into attacking it.

So Bella jumped out and said:

"West of Leyntide, among some cliffs, a great beast worthy of your hunt, Lord Spinjack!"

6/

Rumbling, stomping, the appearance of many legs and eyes.

"WHO DISTURBS SPINJACK, LORD OF HUNTERS?"

I didn't plan this far.

"Uuhhh, o l-lord of hunters, a gift of m-meat for you!"

"THAT MEAT IS NOT A GOOD HUNT. ARE YOU A GOOD HUNT?"

"N-no sir, however there is a town called Leyntide---"

5/

Arachnid tracks led to a large hole in a mountain.

Sellen and Bella devised a devious plan to hide nearby, lure the monster out with a severed horse's head, then ambush it.

As night fell, and nothing happened, I got impatient and starting dancing about with said horse head, to be better bait.

4/

By a river we found corpses of a knight and their squire wrapped in webs, picked at by carrion storks.

Bella scared the storks off;
Sellen ensured they didn't fly away with the squire's body;
Kari queried the stones for cause of death ("Giant spider!")
I stripped the bodies of their belongings.

3/

I was Chimmy, the Rat Knight. Conniving-and-skaven-y wasn't what I would have reached for necessarily, but my 3 Vigour made that feel natural.

We were also:
Kasi the Moss Knight,
Sellen the Weaver Knight,
Bella the War Knight.

2/

Last night, in a Mythic Bastionland oneshot that @isaacisafraid.bsky.social ran, I fought a giant spider---Spinjack, Lord of Hunters!---in single combat, and I won by peeing my pants.

1/

Landmark, Hidden, Secret There are three ways I think about information in roleplaying games. Information can be landmark , or  hidden , or it can be secret . This...

How to handle information management as a GM. Basically "Landmark, Hidden, Secret" by @diyanddragons.bsky.social

(diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/10/land...)

Abolish perception checks. Just give the players information based on their queries and fictional position.

Does Super Mario Bros. (1985) Have Rules? Yes! No? Maybe? Why do you care? Why does it matter?

i wrote an article about that stupid little question i asked a couple weeks ago, why i asked it, and how the answer to the question can be tremendously beneficial for ttrpg designers
possumcreek.medium.com/does-super-m...

A Perfect Wife by David Blandy Southeast Asian vampire horror by Zedeck Siew

Anyhow:

I've got a lot to think about, for my next investigation adventure. In the meantime: a culture of criticism in the TTRPG scene FTW!

PERFECT WIFE is now available in PDF: davidblandy.itch.io/a-perfect-wife

Print version coming soon!

6/6

Nova points out the module's falterings as a mystery actually buttresses its subject. I can't say this was intentional---beyond me simply trying to portray the IRL truths of these people and these powers in the design ...

But it is a generous thought. I will take this as a win!

5/

Also: pointers to the Big Bad himself tend to be in NPC / background details subject to the vagaries of random tables.

I wanted a level of obfuscation ("power insulates itself well from consequence" is a major theme of the adventure), but the whys of the pontianak here are maybe too obscure ...

4/

... chiefly through:

(a) the fact that every authority figure stonewalls you from trying to connect the titular NPC to the disappearances---but feel like standard establishment callousnesses;
(b) a specific power of a sorta-red-herring monster, the vampire baby.

3/

As for the criticisms Nova has re: the mystery aspects of the modules, these feel fair.

I still don't feel like I know how to write investigative adventures. For A PERFECT WIFE the clue-chains lead you to the monster---but the monster's deal is mainly left to implication ...

2/

Bathtub Review: A Perfect Wife Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module de…

🌺A PERFECT WIFE, REVIEWED🌺

" ... this kind of precision, subversion and communication of theme is exactly what I feel the module as an artform should be more widely recognised as being capable of."

There's that pull quote!

Thank you, @idlecartulary.itch.io !
idlecartulary.com/2025/08/04/b...

1/

more progress making these guys which I drew for @bastionland.bsky.social game Mac Attack in 3d! using donated bits & pieces & straws & some kinda weird paste & a marble I found in a stream ( I have never done this before)

Please listen to Rey 👆👆👆

(Thank you Rey! 🙏🙏🙏)

Knock magazine: fantasy art, man dangling from a cliff above a psychedelic swirl

The dust jacket contains a spread of information about creatures called the Lilfolk of the Deep Woods

Magazine, dust jacket removed, and postcard that comes with Knock

Foreword by...Josh McCrowell!

I spent over a year working on this magazine. I know that during the layout and copyediting stages, I read and reread every word.

But it is still so fun to read when you have it in your hands. It turned out so well!

But yeah, the appendix for A PERFECT WIFE was me trying to better contextualise / describe the kind of relationship we have with this stuff.

Whether you believe in the supernatural is academic, because it has social reality---I just wanted to express it with the appropriate simile