2d6 Stingbats

Today we are looking at Righteous Vow Vol. 3: The Mountain Dragon's Brood. This is a 176 page regional adventure with a hexmap and a few keyed dungeons, similar to volumes 1 and 2. It sits somewhere between a 5e/Pathfinder style adventure path and a sandbox like the Cursed Scrolls, although closer to the former than the latter. The setup is that some orcs and also a dragon and its attendant cult are attacking a couple of kingdoms - one human and one dwarven. The kings of both appeal to the party for aid. A possible and likely start to the adventure is the first dungeon: Scorched Tower - the hideout of an orc warband. Random encounters have taken a step backwards even from the meager tables we got in Righteous Vow Vol 1. Here we only get 2 entries: 1: 2d6 orcs (SD p.240) charge towards you. 2-6:  Safe...for now. Look if you can't think of 5 things to put on the random encounter table maybe adventure writing isn't for you. The tower consists of 3 levels, is full of orcs and ...

  Today we're looking at Curse of the Velvet Morning by Dave Silberstein. It is a small region-based adventure for levels 1-3, focused around investigation and mystery. This one's a bit different from the usual fare. For one thing, it doesn't have any dungeons. surprisedpikachu.gif  For another thing, we are told right off the bat that it's inspired by Lee Hazlewood’s song “Some Velvet Morning”, but actually it goes a step further as Lee Hazlewood, a singer-songwriter from The Real World™ features heavily in the adventure. More on that later. The setup is that a shadow demon is using a dryad to lure mortals and feed on their dreams. This includes Lee Hazlewood from 20th-century Earth, whom the dryad has summoned and fallen in love with. Every morning after the demon feeds, the sky turns crimson, crops fail, birds die, etc. The provided hooks all center on getting to the bottom of this apparent curse. The adventure begins with an optional encounter on the road to the vi...

Today we're looking at The Shadow of Sharad by Michael Benoit. It is a crawl through a 14-room cultist hideout aimed at level 1 PCs. Full disclosure: I provided some design feedback to the author early on. So if there's something I don't like it's partially my own dumb fault. The setup is brief and sticks to what will be relevant to the PCs. There's a nice sort of multi-layered setup where we have a cult that's made it's hideout in the shrine of a legendary assassin and his legendary knife. That gives us a few reasons why the party might want to go poking around and lends a nice history to the location.  The random encounter table provides a few words of action and flavor for the bad guys that should be enough for a creative GM to improvise something beyond a pitched hallway battle. And we don't have any spots on the table wasted on entries like "you get some bad vibes" or "a random PC remembers something uncomfortable".  And then we...

Friend of the blog and well-seasoned Shadowdark GM Dollface Killah made some excellent comments over on the Arcane Library discord server about what differentiates a good OSR/classic D&D adventure from a good Shadowdark adventure, and what elements can really enhance system synergy. He formatted into a blog post and I highly recommend that you read it for some very insightful and valuable tips for Shadowdark adventure and dungeon design. https://ruinsofotranto.blogspot.com/2026/01/elements-of-osr-adventures-particularly.html On a scale of 2-12 stingbats, I give that post an A+ .  Top art by Gordy Higgins -  http://www.gordyh.net/