Atalante’s Portable Megadungeon
Here’s a write-up of the greatest magic item of all time: Atalante’s Portable Megadungeon.
Knights check in, but they don’t check out!
And yes, it’s based on the Knight Hotel from Orlando Furioso.
If you want all this in a PDF version, you can find one free here on my itch page.
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Atalante’s Portable Megadungeon is a large, roughly rectangular carved stone.
- The Stone: The stone is portable, but heavy, as large as a thick tome. It is a bulky item. When placed on the ground outdoors and the command word is spoken, the stone’s spirit instantly creates an illusory megadungeon.
- Megadungeon Appearance: The megadungeon’s exterior appears as an ancient imposing fortress. The gate is open and unguarded. The megadungeon’s interior is an endless array of rooms, corridors, halls, towers, and courtyards that unfold before its unwitting prisoners.
- Illusion of Heart’s Desire: The stone’s spirit can discern the heart’s desire of anyone within the dungeon or within sight of the gatehouse. The spirit can generate the illusion of a humanoid foe carrying whatever this desire may be deeper into the dungeon.
- Entering the Dungeon: Anyone who passes beneath the gate falls under the spirit’s spell and will not be able to find the gate again without a guide unaffected by the illusions.
- Heroes check in, but they don’t check out: At any given time there will be 2D12 prisoners already trapped within the megadungeon.
- The Megadungeon is inhabited: The spirit creates illusory foes. The creatures are unaware that they are illusions and behave as if they were real. They will have factions and regularly intrigue against each other.
- Cruel, but not Evil: The spirit has no desire to kill its prisoners or see them killed. Its job is to keep its prisoners trapped inside for as long as possible. Prisoners of the dungeon can take damage but can not be slain by an illusion while in the dungeon. The spirit will also use illusions to keep prisoners from killing each other. Food and drink can be found by those trapped inside.
- Immunity: The stone’s owner is immune to its illusions and can locate and move to any individual trapped inside in a single round. Individuals immune to illusions can recognize that the megadungeon and its inhabitants are not real. However the illusions behave as if they were real when encountered.
- Escaping the Dungeon: It is impossible to escape while under the spirit’s spell. However if one is unaffected by its illusions and can find the stone in the gatehouse and expose its arcane mark to sunlight, the spirit will take material form. If defeated in combat, duel of wits, or any sort of contest the spirit will dispell the illusion and the megadungeon vanish. All prisoners will be freed instantly with full health. The spirit can not be summoned again for a month and a day.
Enjoy!
The Castle
Two months ago I bought that sheet of pink foam. This week I finished making it into a castle.
I have very little experience terrain building. Bad shoebox buildings used in WH40K as a teen and some recent Frostgrave ruins. I do watch Wyloch, Black magic Craft, and others on Youtube. Even still, this was by far the biggest project I’d ever attempted.
Stuff learned from making the castle:
- Procrastination is only a problem if it stops you or keeps you from starting/finishing, otherwise it’s part of the process. The castle spent a few weeks as carboard boxes on the balcony. But it didn’t stay that way.
- More of the process is the mechanical making the bits than the creative act of piecing the bits together. Much more of the process than you’d expect, like 60-70%. The real joy comes 75% percent into the project when all the various bits come together because you’ve slapped a mono-chromatic base coat all over everything. Also, if you make more bits than you need than the next project might actually be easier.
- When you’ve nearly finished making the thing you will figure out the better way to make that thing, but like hell are you going to start over. Save that wisdom for the next project. In this case the two big take-aways are: 1) cardboard makes a better substructure for buildings than styrofoam, and 2) stuffing the cracks with dry toilet paper, then squirting the wad with 50/50 glue-water is a lot easier than trying to get a 50/50 soaked wad stuffed in the crack. (I feel like I must apologize for these sentences. I’m sorry. Wads. Squirt. Crack. We’re all mature adults here.)
- Yeah, it would’ve been cool if you made a thing like this with your dad when you were a kid, but having made it… well, you can understand why your dad didn’t make a thing like this with you. That 60% mechanical bit-making is not a kid friendly or exciting time.
That’s all for now. Maybe some of this is applicable to other creative projects. Time to box it up because it’s meant to be a kid’s birthday present.
I think it’s good enough to impress a 6-year old.
What do you think?
What’s the Story With Your…?
Swords and horses…
Knights have them. Knights love them. Knights won’t stop talking about them. Don’t be left out when your knight friends bring up their swords and horses. Here are 20 bits of lore for your sword and horse.
And be sure to name them!
Your sword was…
- Forged from meteoric steel.
- A gift from the Fey Realm.
- Forged from the dreams of a holy hermit.
- Forged in a burning lake of fire.
- Forged with a hatred for some creature.
- Once owned by a legendary ancient hero.
- Retrieved from a slain dragon’s hoard.
- Forged with a hatred for the sword of another knight.
- Forged to love its owner and will shatter rather than see them suffer a killing blow.
- Once a piece of a celestial/infernal machine.
- Used to bind a dragon or elemental’s soul.
- Forged so sharp it cuts steel like it was paper.
- Pulled from an ancient giant’s skull.
- Once used by an ancestor who saved the kingdom.
- Forged to always return to its owner’s hand.
- Forged in a furnace powered by an elemental.
- Forged from a sliver of solid moonlight.
- Forged as a gift to your family by the reclusive grimfolk.
- Forged so sharp it can cut through stone.
- Won by an ancestor from another knight’s ancestor.
Your horse is…
- Descended from the wind.
- Descended from a shapeshifting fey, angel, or demon.
- Descended from a herd raised on human flesh.
- Smart enough to understand human speech.
- Able to turn itself and its rider invisible once a day.
- Actually some other creature trapped in horse form.
- Descended from sea foam and can walk on water.
- So shiny and lustrous it glows in the dark.
- Made from carved stone.
- Descended from the herd of the sun and doesn’t need food or water.
- Can walk on moonbeams.
- Will always return to you when called for.
- Fearless.
- Able to balance an walk along a roof peak or rope.
- Always able to find acceptable food and water for you.
- Able to teleport up to 30’ once per day.
- Able to leap over buildings and trees.
- Able to fly. It has wings.
- A cousin. Magic was involved. It’s weird.
- Blessed and can find healing herbs when needed.
You can download a free PDF of these lists on my itch page.
It’s likely these and future D20 generators will get compiled into a zine of some kind, probably one based on Orlando Furioso. Stay tuned!
COMPULSORY GAMES by Robert Aickman
TL;DR: It’s good. If you like weird fiction and want to try Aickman, this is as good as any other place to start.
More details:
This collection brings together previously uncollected works, mostly left over from the Faber & Faber reprints from a few years back. As such they might not be the best stories with which to first encounter Aickman. But as a noted author of weird stories maybe there’s no best way to encounter his work except with some hope that you’re getting one of the good ones. This collection certainly delivers a number of those.
At his best, Aickman sits firmly among post-war suspense writers like Patricia Highsmith or Roald Dahl. You can certainly imagine them as Hitchcock productions. Somewhat cruel and murky, with a current of sex bubbling under the lid, some of the stories also call back to Machen and Blackwood. Those stories present other worlds that intersect with our own and cause all manner of bad times for those people unlucky enough to get caught in them.
Instead of giving detailed accounts of each story, I’ve grouped them according to non-exhaustive nor categorically exclusive vibes.
“Alfred Hitchcock was here”
Compulsory Games
Marriage
Residents Only
Letters to the Postman
“Algernon Blackwood was here”
Hand in Glove
Le Miroir
No Time Is Passing
Raising the Wind
The Strangers
“Death is a Lady (and kind of hot)”
Laura
The Fully-Conducted Tour
“Meh”
Wood
The Coffin House
A Disciple of Plato
Aickman’s also a guy who heard Chekhov’s advice to cut the first three pages from any story and said, “To hell with you, Anton. Those three pages are now five.” He’s not a writer to get to the point any time before he well wants to. He’s a very sorry not sorry sort of writer.
And honestly, I kind of like that.
Something Tookish
My buddy Gord published his Murder, She Wrote in the Shire TTRPG, Something Tookish, over at itch.io. I was lucky enough to get a chance to playtest this and it’s great fun. A real shenanigans generator! It’s the Brindlwood Bay/Under Hill, By Water mash-up you didn’t know you needed! (Also, I did some of the artwork.)
So, check it out!
HIGHPORT LOUNGE
I made another solo journaling game.
In Highport Lounge you play as a longhaul starship pilot on a space station waiting for your ship to be resupplied. You have nowhere to go and nothing to do but kill time. It will take two weeks for your ship to be resupplied. So find some paper, roll some dice, and discover what happens.
Beware of the void!
It’s free to download on the Yesterweird itch page.
Enjoy!
Slugknot House and Slime Gardens
Back again to share a link to my latest Into the Odd, Troika, Planescape, Electric Bastionland mess.
This time it’s off to Skugknot House a recently renovated mansion at the center of a neighborhood decaying before an onslaught of extradimensional slime. Marvel as the slug folk unwind and relax! Consult a slime mold with a PhD in Civil Engineering! Ride above the ooze in a bathysphere at the center of a gelatinous cube!
Enjoy! As always feel free to grab a community copy for any reason.
And if you enjoy these pamphlets and would like to support their continued production please consider supporting my patreon. You get these, sneak peaks of WIPs, and a weekly-ish update of reading, watching, and thunking.
The Endless Gallery
Hello,
Here’s an adventure locale depicting an infinite art gallery space. Explore a maze of exhibition spaces, ateliers, and neglected sculpture. Flee the terrors of parasitic art-shaped objects and attempt to understand the strange jargon of the alien curators.
Designed for Into the Odd, The Endless Gallery can be adapted to most surrealistic style adventure games like Troika or even D&D of the Planescape sort (at least as I would play it.).
Enjoy!
100 Dubious Philosophies & Esoteric Aesthetic Movements
This is a list of dubious philosophies and aesthetic movements partially inspired by the novel Odile by Raymond Queneau. A free PDF of this list can be found on my itch.io page. May it provide you with some amusement.
001 The Polysystematizers
002 The Phenomenophile Co-Materialists
003 The Dialetical Telepathicans
004 The Unreformed Piatiletkian Fellow Travelers
005 The Revisionist Anthroposophists
006 The Discordant Anthroposophists
007 The Plurivalent Dyshamonists
008 The Contraceptual Believers
009 The Paralyrical Mediumists
010 The Unresolved Pro-Ultra-Gray Fanatic Front
011 The Incubophile Spiritualists
012 The Unadulterated Asymmetric Revolutionaries
013 The Intolerant League of Polypsychists
014 The Pro-Mayhem Anti-Violence Pacifist Brigade
015 The Contracorp Fruitarians
016 The Uncoordinated Metaphychists
017 The Disseminated Parachists
018 The Barbiturates League
019 The Psychoanalysis by Correspondence League
020 The Salty Eggs Luncheon Group
021 The Dissident Socio-Messiahs
022 The Non-Active Nihilistic Periphery
023 The Revolutionary Anti-Intellectuals
024 The Revolving Integral Nullifiers
025 The Initiated Anti-Esoteric Trade Unionists
026 The Thirty-One Deep Country Groups
027 The Non-Conforming Sycophantic Faction
028 The Three Times Removed
029 The Nullfidian Collectivists
030 The Choplogic Bloc
031 The Followers of Whannt
032 The Shrouded Brethren
033 The Exemplary Forward
034 The Walkers Beneath the Sea
035 The Esteemed Combobulators
036 The Mnenomancers League
037 The Fragmentary Sporadicists
038 The Wayward Syndicate
039 The Peripatetic Harmonizers
040 The Inscrutable Academics
041 The Polarizing Disassociaters
042 The Zoological Concrete
043 The Non-Technical Sublime
044 The Air Loom Operators
045 The Shaver Host
046 The Active Worriers
047 The Repeating Premagnetizers
048 The Grosbanal Insertion
049 The Lyrical Minimalists
050 The Linear Vorticists
051 The Anti-Clerical Papacy
052 The Bicamarel Psychoanalysts
053 The Aerial Expansionists
054 The Order of Erudite Metaphysicians
055 The Infernal Grammarians
056 The Consolidated Puzzlers
057 The Gaxmold Liberation Front
058 The Gary Moldvay Group
059 The Re-Incorporated Etheric Arrangers
060 The Variable Harmonists
061 The Coalition of Heretical Choirs
062 The Twelve Unorthodox Adherents
063 The Manifold Diligence
064 The Raving Urbanologists
065 The Arch Royal Brotherhood
066 The Driven Word
067 The Abernathy Wormwold Descriptivist Agenda
068 The Celestial Builders Connection
069 The Tuesday Night Climbers
070 The Osmosis Steel Circle
071 The Oneironautic Initiative
072 The Duoshulginist Tendency
073 The Button Club
074 The Left-Handed Chess Players
075 The Goldminer’s Children
076 The Underdwellers
077 The Raskrogan Realtors
078 The Sand Counters
079 The Erasmus Brigade
080 The Beyond Team
081 The Outsividisismists
082 The Scattered Seeds of the Exiled Regents
083 The Optimate International
084 The Perspicacious Exegetes
085 The Antediluvian Peoples Faction
086 The Resurrected Pyromantic Gang
087 The Smokewrights Order
088 The Stargazer Pie Supper Club
089 The Ascendant Bibliomaniacs
090 The Morganwig Shoutsmiths
091 The Pastel Winged Seraphim
092 The Free Shepherds
093 The Near-Sighted Sharpshooters
094 The Occluded Shadowers
095 The Occasional Witnesses
096 The League of the Long Afternoon
097 The 842 Club
098 The Sky Lighters Co-Dependency
099 The Twilight Minsters
100 The Mistaken
Cemetery of the Sepulchral Monolith
I’ve uploaded a new adventure to my itch page…
Somewhere near the edge of Bastion on the borders of Deep Country a monolith stands. A pockmarked slab of a strange mineral-like material, the monolith is in fact alive and it consumes ghosts to survive!
Cemetery of the Sepulchral Monolith is a brochure adventure for Chris McDowall’s Into the Odd, but can be used for similar games. In it you will encounter a monolith that generates ghosts in order to consume them, three factions, and a number of other interesting locales.
The price tag is 3USD, but feel free to download a community copy for any reason.
And if you’d like, you can support me on patreon. You get glimpses of WIPs, early access to anything I make, and a weekly post of morbid introspection!
Doesn’t that sound fun?
Yesterweird 