#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 8, Room 6
Going back to Room #2 the next passage looks similar to the passageway for Room #3.

The tunnel is largely empty.
Original Roleplaying Concepts
Going back to Room #2 the next passage looks similar to the passageway for Room #3.
Now in its sixteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2023 took place on Saturday, June 24th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Thanks to the generosity of David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3, Fil Baldowski at All Rolled Up, and others, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day, both in the USA and elsewhere.
—oOo—Passageway 4 ends in a locked door. The lock can be picked or forced open with a combined strength of 24.
Inside this small oval shape room, the party finds a collection of treasure.
The lamps (six total) glow with an arcane light (via a continual light spell).
There are all sorts of small chests here (10+1d6) each containing gems (5d8 x 100 gp worth), a decanter of endless water, a spell book with random spells (1d10 1st level, 1d8 2nd level, 1d6 3rd level, 1d4 4th level, and 1 5th level). Despite it's obvious age it appears to be magically preserved.*
*If a player reads a spell from this spell book as if it were a scroll, it will destroy the whole book.
There is a dagger +2, +3 to lycanthropes.
A shield +2, +3 vs. missile fire.
A scroll of teleportation (with detailed descriptions of the 1st level).
As well as 1d4+3 random other magic items.
Three of the small chests act as large bags of holding. A person could carry one each.
There is a jeweled crown (cursed, after possessing it for one year the wearer thinks they are a king and demand to be treated as such).
And a gilded, jeweled dagger. It is sharp but not magical. It is worth 1,000 gp.
Otherwise the room is a dead end.
--
Game Masters should reward XP value equal to 1/2 of the GP value of treasure found.
Now in its sixteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2023 took place on Saturday, June 24th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Thanks to the generosity of David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3, Fil Baldowski at All Rolled Up, and others, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day, both in the USA and elsewhere.
—oOo—It is more common for roleplaying games to get turned into board games, for example, Exalted: Legacy of the Unconquered Sun for the Exalted roleplaying game from White Wolf Entertainment and Grand Tribunal, the board game set in the world of Atlas Games’ Ars Magica, but that trend is on the turn. Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game from Magpie Games is based on Leder Games’ Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right, whilst the popular Zombicide board game from CMON Global Limited now has its own stand-alone roleplaying game in the form of Zombicide: Chronicles – The Roleplaying Game. For Free RPG Day 2021, CoolMiniOrNot and Guillotine Games released the Zombicide: Chronicles Free RPG Day Mission Booklet. This contained a trio of short scenarios which can either set up or continue a post-apocalyptic campaign in which the dead rise, walk, shamble, or even run, and want to munch on your brains. However, it did not contain any rules from Zombicide: Chronicles—for that the Zombie Master needed to download the Zombicide: Chronicles Quick-Start, which has everything necessary to play through the three scenarios in the Zombicide: Chronicles Free RPG Day Mission Booklet. This is also the case for the Zombicide: Chronicles Free RPG Day 2 Mission Booklet.
The Zombicide: Chronicles Free RPG Day 2 Mission Booklet contains two scenarios rather than the three of Zombicide: Chronicles Free RPG Day Mission Booklet from Free RPG Day 2021. They will work with either the Zombicide: Chronicles Quick-Start or the full rules from Zombicide: Chronicles – The Roleplaying Game. The first of the two missions in the booklet, ‘Car Crush’, is the longer and the more detailed—and is the better for it. The scenario begins with the Survivors encountering Reginald, a chauffeur—who happens to be an English chauffeur for a well-known rapper in the pre-Zombicide Chronicles world—in a spot of difficulty. His limousine’s battery is flat and needs replacing, but he is surrounded by zombies. If he can get a replacement battery, he can get to a source of food and supplies that has yet to be scavenged. Can the Survivors help? Thankfully, the chauffeur has stopped right outside the perfect place to find a replacement battery: Monster Joe’s Used Auto Parts. The rest of the mission is a sandbox adventure set entirely within the confines of a junkyard. Which just happens to be full of zombies because the Mob used ‘Billy Boy’, Monster Joe’s enormous car crusher, to dispose of bodies. Unfortunately, the Mob has been using it for years and whilst that was not before the apocalypse, after an apocalypse when the undead have arisen to walk the earth and feed on the living, it definitely is! This results in a great set-up with members of the corpse cortege ready to leap out of partially crushed wrecks and the junkyard’s car graveyard. It being a junkyard, it has towering piles of well, junk, and scrap, some of them noteworthy and interesting some not, and it has dogs to discourage would be thieves and intruders, and some of these are, of course, zombie dogs.
‘Car Crush’ details nine locations, each one a set-piece of its own. In addition to this, there are a trio of events which add flavour and a little pathos to the whole affair. The scenario also serves as a prequel to Road to Haven, which is the first campaign for Zombicide Chronicles. To play that, Reginald should survive the mission and drive the Survivors to the Shopmarket, which marks the start of the campaign proper, where they will be able to resupply with food and perhaps even run into Reginald’s boss, Adam W. Clever. Even if the Zombie Master decides not to run the scenario as part of the Road to Haven campaign, this is a really fun scenario which plays up to the classic tropes of American junkyard, right up to including links with the Mob.
Where ‘Car Crush’ was more open and had more of a freeform feel to it, the second mission, ‘Oliver Twisted’ is more constrained and tactical, and as the title suggests, it involves children. It is also the shorter of the two. It also assumes that the Survivors have access to a Shelter and have made contact with other Shelters such that the Survivors possess a radio and a codebook which enables the various occupants of the Shelters to communicate with each other in secrecy. Unfortunately, the Survivors have had their copy of the codebook stolen—and stolen by children, no less! So to enable the Survivors to remain in contact with the other Shelters, they need to retrieve the codebook. Which means finding the children, who all turn out to be orphans with a strong distrust of adults. Plus, the one orphan who stole the codebook has been kidnapped by the ‘Devils’, a band of soldiers who have holed up in the upper levels of a city block. Worse, they have surrounded it with zombies! This sets up a tactical situation in which the Survivors—none of them trained soldiers—have to assault or break into hideout occupied by trained soldiers. Whilst there is some roleplaying to be had between the orphans and the Survivors, ‘Oliver Twisted’ primarily consists of combat and stealth, and it lacks the inventiveness of ‘Car Crush’. Not every scenario has to be quite as inventive, but ‘Oliver Twisted’ is just merely okay.
Physically, Zombicide: Chronicles Free RPG Day 2 Mission Booklet is well presented, the artwork, all cartoonish zombies and Survivors, is decent, and the one map in the booklet does the job very nicely.
If the Zombie Master wants two more Missions for Zombicide: Chronicles – The Roleplaying Game, then Zombicide: Chronicles Free RPG Day 2 Mission Booklet will give her that. If the Zombie Master is planning to run Road to Haven, the first campaign for Zombicide: Chronicles – The Roleplaying Game, then the Zombicide: Chronicles Free RPG Day 2 Mission Booklet is exactly what she needs. Either way, the Zombicide: Chronicles Free RPG Day 2 Mission Booklet includes two Missions which are decent, but one of which is a lot more fun and inventive than the other.
I wasn't going to promote any Kickstarters for a bit after a month of doing nothing but Wasted Lands, but this one came up and I couldn't say no.
The Beast & Snow #1 - NSFW Queer Fairytale Romance
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/comicuno/beastsnow1?ref=theotherside
Revision fairy tales? Vampires? Strong female leads? Kat Calamia and Phil Falco? Dorilys Giacchetto cover? Liana Kangas cover? Stjepan Sejic cover?!
Sign me up! No need, I did that myself.
Ok so this looks like a lot of fun and I am getting a strong "Carmilla" and "Vampyres" vibe from this.
The art looks great and the story should be great from what little bit I can gather here. They are just missing a witch from being perfect! (I am nothing if not consistent.)
And if you think I am NOT doing versions of these characters for my home game using my Monster Mash rules then you don't know me or this blog very well.
They have met their funding and unlocked their first stretch goal. Looks like they might need more stretch goals at this rate!
But seriously, this looks like a lot of fun and I hope there are a lot of issues in this series.
Not counting collections (I'll detail that later) the most recent game I have bought was bought FOR me and not BY me. That would be my Spanish Language D&D 5e books.
I got these as Birthday presents back in June because I am learning Spanish now. They are actually a lot of fun and have been a great challenge. I am looking for other RPGs in Spanish too.
Continuing on in this passageway the party encounters a long corridor.
This corridor is lit with an eerie eldritch light. The floor is made up of tiles.
The corridor is 50ft long, and every five feet there is a pressure plate on the floor that fires a magic missile at the party. 1d6 hp of damage, it will always hit one character at random.
A thief can find the traps (the pressure plate), but the trap itself is magical and needs a dispel magic to stop. The dispel magic only works for 1 of the 10 traps in this area.
Doing so will result in 50 xp.
The first four tunnels are on the left, and they are all lined up next to each other. The fifth tunnel is on the right and at an angle away from the others.
The farthest tunnel opening on the left leads to a short but wide tunnel. The walls are smooth, as is the floor, but it is obviously carved out of the rock. Within this tunnel, the party encounters a group of four small demons.
DRETCH
These creatures are fat, with long, spindly arms and legs. They have rudimentary human heads, with slobbering jaws and folds of fat. Dretch demons have some weak demonic powers.
Armor Class: 2 [17]
Hit Dice: 4 (18 hp)
Attacks: 2 claws (1d4), 1 bite (1d6)
THAC0: 16 [+3]
Movement: 120’ (40’)
Saving Throws: D10 W11 P12 B13 S14 (4)
Morale: 6
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 225
Number Appearing: 1d4+1
Treasure Type: J, K, L, M
Yeah...I am obsessed. Mail call today, and it was full of some great witch books.
Up first, another witch-centric RPG I backed on Kickstarter, Last Sabbath.
The game looks phenomenal, and I want to try it out really soon.
And one I have been waiting 20+ years for.
Ashley Poston has a novel out about 17-year-old Tara, one of my all-time favorite witches.
This is her pre-Sunnydale days, and I can't wait to jump into this. And because I had a credit lying around, I picked it up on Audible as well.
While I am sure the narrator will be great, it would have been nice to get Amber Benson to do it.
--
So yeah I *know* I am obsessed, and I know I catch some grief for it online, but you know what?
I don't actually care.
This is my little corner of the Internet, and I get to do what I love here. And if that gets me 10 fans or 10,000*, then fantastic! Plenty of other sites out there that leave me scratching my head asking "who would even find that fun??" but hey, their sites, their rules.
To quote Steve Martin, "The most amazing thing to me is, I get paid for doing this!"
(*It is less than 10,000, but a lot more than 10!)
Another one that has been on my mine a bit lately.
My first Gamemaster was myself really. We all kind of taught ourselves how to play back then and I didn't have older brothers or friends that played. But that changed when I got to Jr. High.
My first real DM was Jon Cook and we played this hybrid version of Basic (B/X) D&D and 1st Edition Advanced D&D.
In a lot of ways I guess I am still chasing that high.
This one is easy because we played it New Year's Eve and Year's Day. My first game for 2023 was D&D 5e Dragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen.
I was a player in it, not the DM, which was a nice change of pace.
My oldest was running it, and he combined it with bits and pieces of Rise of Tiamat and Horde of the Dragon Queen from the start of D&D 5.
Honestly, he did not care for the adventure as it was written and wanted to tweak it a bit for us. We did not play many more sessions of this. My "falling out" with D&D 5 had a lot to do with that and his promotion as a pastry chef meant he had less time. But we did have a great time. I was cleaning up our game room the other day and all of our minis are still in the "current campaign" box.
These stairs go down into this tomb for quite a long way. Also, any dwarves (or other similar characters) will also note the stairs are moving towards the north.
The stairs end in a large and somewhat cooler chamber. There is a set of large iron doors.
These doors are large and heavy. To open these doors requires a combined strength of 40 points or magic. Unless staked open they will slam shut.
--
This level has been largely protected from the volcanic activity of the level above.
Wandering monsters are found here using the table for 8th level (and sometimes 7th level). Again, magic sensitive characters can detect low levels of necromantic magic here.
What is Monster Mash II: A Midsummer Night's Dream?
Much like my first Monster Mash, this one has classes that people typically think of as "monsters" for the D&D game, but uses the special "race-as-class" feature of older, Basic-era, versions of D&D like Moldvay Basic/Cook & Marsh Expert and BECMI.
This book features 12 faerie and sylvan-based classes. Bugbears, Centaurs, Hamadryads, Leprechauns, Nymphs, Pixies, Púcas, Satyrs, Werebears, Werefoxes, and Woodwoses.
Each can be played as a Basic-era "Race-as-Class," with each gaining special abilities as they level up, or as an Advanced "Race" with recommendations for classes.
Also included is the Faerie Witch, because, well, it is one of my books.
There are also new spells for Clerics, Druids, Illusionists, Magic-users, and Witches.
And new occult powers and ritual spells for Faerie Witches.
This book can be combined with my first Monster Mash for even more combinations.
Grab yours now!