The Temple of the Onyx Cat

The Temple of the Onyx Cat is a 0-level funnel, written by Mark Tasaka. Art is by Mark Tasaka. The publisher is Old School Adventures.

This adventure has two parts: travel and exploring the temple. The hook is that you get 250 gp if you succeed. This introduces a bit of the world, but it assumes that the PCs already want to be adventurers. I have a tendency to believe that funnels are, largely, the story of why these particular people had to become adventurers. I.e., it answers the question "Why couldn't these particular people just go back to farming and stonemasonry?"

Of course, this is (in effect) the same setup as The Portal Under the Stars, and it works. It just doesn't feel like the Hand of Fate selecting the few survivors for extraordinary things in the same way that the final encounter in Portal does - whether the PCs defeat it or just stand back as it issues forth!

The travel portion of the adventure supplies the judge with five encounters to use. These might occur on the way to the temple, or on the return journey, as the judge decides. There is no need to use them all. There is no map to indicate where each encounter would naturally occur, and, by extension, the players have no control over events here. I would strongly consider creating a hex map, placing the encounters, adding some more encounters, and then provide clues for the players about what the PCs might encounter if they choose one route over another. This has the added advantage of leaving the unused encounters intact as the PCs continue to explore the world surrounding their village.

The second section is the temple itself, which has enough things to interact with to be satisfying. The adventure again takes its lead from Portal, in that, if you run into something that might be able to speak to you, it attacks you as soon as it has delivered its pre-written lines. This is a great shame, and the discerning judge should feel free to ignore that aspect of both adventures. 

In order to run this adventure, I encourage the judge to read it thoroughly and make changes to your liking. There are problems with the language used in the read-aloud text. The first room on the temple is called the "foray" for instance (I assume that "forecourt" or something similar was intended), and "thy is used as "the". Some of the language in the descriptive text is just clunky, and will be better if you give it a good tune-up.

There is also a fairly generic vibe to the setting. I don't know where I am. On one hand, parts of the writing make it seem as though I might be in Feudal Japan. On the other hand, there are dire raccoons...and there is nothing explicitly Japanese in the set-up. This speaks to the larger issue of theme, and the judge would be well advised to decide where exactly this adventure is going to take place (within their own personal milieu) and adjust the encounters to take this into account.

The author also misses the prime opportunity to explain why the merchant (in the adventure hook) wanted the Onyx Cat in the first place. Is it magical? Is it worth considerably more than 250 gp? Is the merchant a demon, a god, or a magician in disguise? The Onyx Cat in particular was pretty well guarded, after all. It would be nice if it had echoes throughout the PCs' adventuring careers, beyond its guardian's promises of revenge.

To sum up, this is a usable adventure, fairly generic, but having potential to be crafted by the judge into something more. And it has demonic squirrels, which is a plus. It was also free, and one should not criticize things people make for love too deeply. Just be aware that this one will require a degree of effort to make it sing.

You are no Adventurer. But, the life of adventure has always appealed to you; a life on the road, seeking treasure and fortune. There has always been a deep yearning in your heart to break free from your mundane existence as a villager.

“How can I break free from this boring life that I am destined to live?” You have asked yourself a number of times.

Then, one day, the answer to your question arrives in the form of a travelling merchant to your village.

“There is a ruined temple three days travel from here,” the Merchant say, “within the temple is an artefact that I am very interested in obtaining. The object that I seek is a figurine of black onyx cat sitting on top of a turtle. Whoever shall bring me the figurine shall receive a reward of 250 gold pieces.”

The free pdf is no longer available.

The Temple of the Hamster

The Temple of the Hamster is a 3rd level adventure by Daniel Vance. Art is by Carmin Vance, Kevin Vecchi, and Daniel Vance (including cartography). The publisher is Vance Games.

Daniel Vance has a gift for mixing absurdity with serious content, creating adventures that are, on one hand, as silly as you could want, and on the other hand filled with blood and frankly disturbing images. While this is all sort of a laugh, and you are probably using the supplied pregenerated characters, there is something awful about the basic premise: oversized rodents have infiltrated the town, are pretending to be human, and their Hamster God is starting to flex his furry muscles again.

I wouldn't run this as part of a grindingly serious campaign modeled off of the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard or The Lord of the Rings, but in my home game, where Mutant Crawl Classics characters and Dungeon Crawl Classics characters rub elbows? Very much so. And I wouldn't even bother making the PCs go to Narcosa first. Obviously, The Temple of the Hamster would be a very fun (and memorable) convention game!

What I am trying to get across here (without spoilers) is that this adventure is absolutely absurd in its basic premise and some of its content. But, given that you accept that premise (and the content that goes with it), it is not written as a joke adventure. The cover actually does a good job of getting across the tone - very funny until you get to the severed head and the pool of blood. And, okay, yes, it is still funny then, but you might not want that to be your character!

The town of Kamis lies in a panic. Townsfolk are missing and city watchmen lie dead; their sides split open from being over stuffed with grain. A stalwart cadre of adventurers must explore the town of Kamis and uncover the terrible mysteries of the Temple of the Hamster. These adventurers must brave terrible traps and minions before facing the dread peril at the heart of the temple. The Temple of the Hamster is packed with hamster style adventure and has been redesigned to have 100% more hamster wheels and mayhem.

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Tales From the Smoking Wyrm #2

Tales From the Smoking Wyrm #2 was written by Trevor Stamper, Brian Gilkison, John Olszewski, and Jacob Harmon. Art is by Joel Phillips, Carmin Vance, Alex Mayo, Bradley McDevitt, Brian Maikisch, and Trevor Stamper. The publisher is Blind Visionary Publications.

Disclaimer: I backed the successful kickstarter for this product.

This is the second issue of Tales From the Smoking Wyrm. Let's dive right in!

King of Beasts: This is a full patron write-up by Jake Harmon, including three patron spells: speak with animals, bloodsense, and awaken. This third spell allows the caster or another willing creature to bond with one or more spirit animals. 18 such animal spirits are provided; judges may easily come up with others, or allow their players to suggest them. 

The King of Beasts doesn't represent any one specific kind of animal, but is all beasts at once...although his domain does not include insects, mollusks, or similar creatures.

Dwarven Jäger: This is an alternative class for dwarves, written by Brian Gilkison. It focuses on two-weapon fighting, as opposed to the "Sword & Board" ability of standard dwarves. I am not sure that loss of being able to smell gold makes up for the combat advantages the class gets, but Dungeon Crawl Classics is not overly concerned with balance in any case. 

The class also includes details for throwing hammers and hand crossbows.

Rites & Rituals pt. II: Church Rituals picks up from Issue #1 with rituals designed for clerics and similar purveyors of idol magic in your campaigns. The sample rituals are blessings of the grave, liturgy of blessing, and rite of consecration. Examples of each ritual is provided for followers of Cthulhu and Osiris. The results of church rituals might include miracles, and a table of 30 is provided. In addition, Pious Deeds make their first appearance, but hopefully not their last. The authors are John Olszewski and Trevor Stamper.

Culpepper's Herbal: Author Trevor Stamper describes agrimony and bastard agrimony, with all the information required to use them in a game. Of equal, or even superior, interest is the discussion of decoctions. What you need to do to process, keep, and use herbs is something that most people in the modern era have little or no experience with.

Shoggoth: This is not the first time shoggoths have appeared in Dungeon Crawl Classics, but it is probably the most complete treatment that they have received, Trevor Stamper and Brian Gilkison provide everything you need to build a shoggoth for your home game, using a method similar to that used to create dragons in the core rulebook. But that's not all! The authors also provide details for using the find familiar spell to bond oneself with something a bit more Lovecraftian. On top of that, a critical hit table just for shoggoths is supplied.

All in all, this article was worth the price of the zine all by itself. And it is not, as we have seen, by itself!

The issue ends with Onward Retainer (a cartoon created by Joel Philips), an Editor's Note by the same, and Wyrm Words (a word search by Trevor Stamper and the answers to the crossword puzzle from the last issue). 

Tales from the Smoking Wyrm is a fanzine inspired not just by the roleplaying game Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC), but also by the wondrous fanzines of the past 40 years! While we focus on DCC, the material produced can be easily translated into any Old School Renaissance (OSR) system.

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Zuppie’s tavern name etc. table (Honorary)

Zuppie’s tavern name etc. table was created by Markus Marjomaa and Antti Oikarinen. The publisher is Knights in the North.

This is a tavern name generator, which uses two rolls from a d160 to name your newest watering hole. Don't own a d160? Well, neither do I, but you can use 1d16 and 1d10 to simulate a d160, or you can roll one here. 

(The largest die I own is a d120, although I own 10-sided dice designed to roll a d10,000. Doing this blog post made me search for a d160, and I could not find a die like this I could purchase or even look at. The article reads as though the authors might have access to such a die, though, and if anyone can send me a link to where I could purchase a d160, I would appreciate it!)

This listing is honorary because it pertains to fantasy role-playing games in general, and is not specific to Dungeon Crawl Classics, but it comes from the Knights in the North, who have created many fine articles for DCC.

It is free.

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Tales From the Smoking Wyrm 2020 Cyclops Con Special

Tales From the Smoking Wyrm 2020 Cyclops Con Special was written by Trevor Stamper, John Olszewski, and Brian Gilkison. Art is by Joel Phillips, Carmin Vance, Alex Mayo, Bradley McDevitt, Caitlin Stamper, and Trevor Stamper. The publisher is Blind Visionary Publications.

In-person conventions were cancelled in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Goodman Games responded by creating a series of online conventions, starting with Cyclops Con. This generated a wave of goodwill in the community, and resulted in a number of swag items being created, including the 2020 Cyclops Con Special of Tales From the Smoking Wyrm.

This special reprints The Silver Ball and Telepathic Rats Expanded from Issue #1, as well as What is the Smoking Wyrm? The material is excellent, and if this gets you to pick up the actual issue, all the more power to you and Blind Visionary Publications both. At the time of this writing, the pdf is available for free, but I have no idea how long that will last.

Tales from the Smoking Wyrm is a fanzine inspired not just by the roleplaying game Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC), but also by the wondrous fanzines of the past 40 years! While we focus on DCC, the material produced can be easily translated into any Old School Renaissance (OSR) system.

Get It Here!

Tales of the Shudder Mountains

DCC 83.1: Tales of the Shudder Mountains was written by Michael Curtis. Art is by Doug Kovacs (cover), S.S. Crompton (cartography), Stefan Poag, and Michael Wilson. The publisher is Goodman Games.

This product is three short adventures (or "Tales") which take place in the Shudder Mountains (first introduced in The Chained Coffin).

This product continues the practice of re-using cover art to indicate that something is part of the same setting, similar to Harley Stroh's Peril on the Purple Planet and Journey to the Center of Aereth. It is a good system to indicate that a new produce belongs with a particular setting, along with the module numbering and the digest-sized format.

The "Tale" format in this product has each adventure starting with a short bit of folklore that the PCs might be told around the fire when visiting the Shudfolk. This is fantastic, as it feeds directly into the setting itself. and is reminiscent of the source material. A clever judge could seed these "Tales" (and similar) early in a Shudder Mountains campaign, so that when the PCs encountered the reality behind the tale there would be a wonderful sense of frisson.

Tale 1: The Grave Pool (level 4): Sooner or later a PC is going to die, and what if your party is brave foolhardy enough to try to bring them back? Adventures like Blades Against Death and The Revelation of Mulmo aren't appropriate for the Shudder Mountains, but this one is. There is a nice reference to Manly Wade Wellman's The Little Black Train.

Tale 2: Moonricket Bridge (level 1): This one is a ghost story. And, while there is something to fight, like the best ghost stories understanding and compassion lead to the best possible outcome. Too often, ghost stories are not really about understanding the past. This one is. It plays to the strengths of the setting, and it plays to the strengths of Dungeon Crawl Classics. It is thoroughly Appendix N of the Who Fears the Devil? type.

Tale 3: The WitchMan of Darkweather Mountain (level 5): Here is another example of an adventure where the PCs may Quest For It and get something other than what they bargained for. Or they may get exactly what they are after, if they can both overcome the opposition and are reasonably lucky. Neither this tale nor The Grave Pool simply messes with player hopes...but PCs do take risks to gain the benefits they hope for!

If you needed any more proof of Michael Curtis' firm mastery of folkloric Appalachian-style Dungeon Crawl Classics, this product delivers. Much of the Shudder Mountains material (if not all!) would rock mightily in a Weird Frontiers game as well, and a judge could easily use the Shudder Mountains as a conduit between worlds, like the "thinnies" in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. Honestly, as tied as these adventures are into the feel of the Shudder Mountains, nothing would prevent a judge from making slight modifications and placing them in another campaign milieu.

This digest-sized adventure module presents three short encounters in the Shudder Mountains. All are compatible with the setting presented in DCC #83: The Chained Coffin, and this module is the perfect size to be stored in your boxed set! The adventures are inspired by the works of Manly Wade Wellman and continue the “backwoods fantasy” theme established in DCC #83: The Chained Coffin.

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Tales From the Magician's Skull #5

Tales From the Magician's Skull #5 was written by Howard Andrew Jones, Adrian Cole, James Enge, John C. Hocking, Violette Malan, Adrian Simmons, C.L. Werner, and Terry Olson (DCC statistics). Art is by Sanjulian (cover), Chris Arneson, Randy Broecker, Samuel Dillon, Jennell Jaquays, Doug Kovacs, Peter Mullen, and Russ Nicholson. The publisher is Goodman Games.

Disclosure: I backed the successful kickstarter for a four-issue subscription beginning with issue #2, and ending with this issue.

As with all entries in the Tales From the Magician's Skull series, I will again be focusing on the gaming material provided. This should not be taken as a criticism of the issue's excellent fictional content; it is simply a consequence of the blog's focus on treasures for the Dungeon Crawl Classics game system! 

It should be noted that statting out materials from fiction is as much an art as it is a science. Sometimes the game material is inspired by the source material more than it is a faithful reproduction thereof. The same is the case here.

In a blog post about creating monsters for Dungeon Crawl Classics, i wrote "when you are reading some fantasy or science fiction novel (in Appendix N or otherwise), keep a notebook by your side. Jot down quick stats for the creatures you encounter. Some of these you might want to revise later for your own adventures. If you encounter an interesting idea, write it down! The very act of doing so will make it more likely to come to mind when you are stuck for ideas." Really, Terry Olson's The Monster Pit columns are really a Master Class in doing the same thing.

Pool of Memory: Two monsters are statted out: the memory crystal and the related mouth-plants. These are good examples of monsters that attack more than just hit points. 

Guardian of Nalsir-fel: The ventriloserpent is a big snake with the ability to throw other people's voices.

In the Corridors of the Crow: We are supplied statistics for the carapaced mauler. 

Dreams of a Sunken Realm: We are treated to water demons (another un-dead swarm, see issue #4).

Demons of the Depths: Terry Olson stats out Samebito (a summoned shark-demon).

This issue only had two pages for The Monster Pit, which did provide some useful monsters. Although this is the least interesting issue so far from a game content perspective, that does not make it uninteresting. Given the constraints of the inspirational material (some stories provide more new things to give statistics to than others) and presumably the space constraints (I assume Goodman Games provides a word count/space consideration based on the length of the tales in a given issue), I am happy with what is here. If I had to choose just a single issue for game content, though, this would not be my first choice.

Experience the sword and sorcery adventure that is Tales From The Magician’s Skull #5!

Behold! I have fashioned a magazine like those from fabled days of yore. It overflows with thrilling adventures. There are swords, and there is sorcery. There are dark deeds and daring rescues. There are lands where heroes fear to tread. Dare you imagine it? Picture this as well — maps to wondrous and terrible places. Electrifying art for every tale. Guides to bring the terrors within to your own game table. All I lack are a few paltry shekels. Grant them to me, and I shall fling open a new portal to a world of ancient wonders! Join me, mortal dogs! Together we shall storm the gates of Valhalla!

Tales From The Magician’s Skull is a magazine of all-new swords & sorcery fiction. Issue #5 features cover art by Sanjulian, and stories by Adrian Cole, James Enge, John C. Hocking, Violette Malan, Adrian Simmons, and C.L. Werner. The magazine is edited by Howard Andrew Jones and published by Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games. Each story is lovingly illustrated by industry stalwarts, and issue #5 features art by Chris Arneson, Randy Broecker, Samuel Dillon, Jennell Jaquays, Doug Kovacs, Peter Mullen, and Russ Nicholson.

Finally, issue #5 includes a short appendix presenting DCC RPG stats for all the new material contained inside!

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