The Rusted Colossus: 01 | Concept, Structure, and WIP Cover Art

Oh hi there, fancy seeing you here…

I’m deep in the guts of my latest project: The Rusted Colossus, a GOZR one-shot adventure. Planning to publish it—probably as a zine, definitely as a PDF.

I figured that some of you folks might be interested in self publishing your own content too, so I’m gonna do a little irregular series on the journey documenting all my missteps for educational and entertainment purposes.

Also, if you have experience of this, please get in touch if you have any advice!

Concept

I knew upfront that I wanted to do a one shot, and design it with GOZR in mind. I really like GOZR, but I do think it’s popularity suffers from a lack of published adventures which is something I can help with, and in terms of project size — doing a one shot seems much more achievable than trying to design an Event Based Campaign or a Sandbox (Besides, GOZR itself has a pretty good sandbox generation kit in it’s own rules that’s ready to go).

Armed with this knowledge, I brainstormed a few quick ideas brazenly inspired by a lifetime of consumed nerd culture and came up with 5 basic concepts:

1. The Shattered Gozspire – A broken tower of ancient Gozr technology pulses with unstable energy.

2. Flesh Carnival of the Ooze King – A living fairground of writhing meat and grotesque amusements.

3. The Wyrm That Burrows the Sky – A sky-eating mega-worm carves a tunnel through reality.

4. The Rusted Colossus – A giant, dead machine-being lies half-buried in the wastes.

5. The Halls of the Forgotten Gozr – A tomb-city of long-lost Gozr elders, now ghostly echoes.

Of these, the Rusted Colossus spoke to me the most, I love me a big robot, I do. I could picture this giant mech from the before times being uncovered by the shifting sands of the Ghost Dunes, with the pilot still alive but twisted inside. Why is the Mech there? Who is the pilot? What does he want? Juicy.

Structure

A dungeon is the perfect setting for a one-shot. But in TTRPG terms, a "dungeon" doesn’t have to be stone walls and torch-lit corridors. It’s just a closed adventure space that says, “This is where the action happens”.

But what type of dungeon? Well, it’s a one shot, so I don’t want anything large, or complicated that would hinder the completion of the adventure in one session. That rules out a Megadungeon then!

I decided to do a bit of research and ended up reminding myself of the Five Room Dungeon by roleplayingtips as well discovering the Dungeon Checklist by Goblin Punch. Both of which have helped me to think about how the dungeon breaks down into creamy chunks. I’ll start covering the specifics of those in a later post, but for now, the overview:

Five Room Dungeon

The 5RD says that your one shot dungeon should contain five rooms (o, rly?!) and should follow the narrative story structure of the hero’s journey, with each room representing a step on that path:

1. A Guardian - The reason no one already cleared this dungeon out. Often a combat, but not neccesarily.

2. A Puzzle

3. A Setback - Usually a trick or a trap that forces a strategic adjustment

4. The climax - Typically your BBEG, but not necessarily a combat.

5. A Reward, or Plot Twist

You don’t have to approach these in this set order, and you don’t have to approach these as a linear path either. Nor do you have to treat these 5 rooms as literally 5 rooms, rather as five zones? Does that make sense?

Dungeon Checklist

Goblin Punch’s checklist here is pretty detailed, so I’d encourage you to check it out yourself for deep details. Here it is, cross examined against the 5RD framework:

1. Something to steal - This straddles the idea of “a reward” from the 5rd.

2. Something to be killed - The “guardian” from 5RD, and any other baddies would seem to fit this.

3. Something to kill you - A difficult combat encounter or trap, I think this is covered by the BBEG in “the climax” and potentially the “plot twist”.

4. Different paths - Interesting one for a 5RD, the idea is that the players experience the full five zones, so I’ll need to consider how to make the path the PCs take have actual consequences.

5. Someone to talk to - I think this could be covered twice, with the “guardian” and “the climax” with the BBEG, with both allowing combat to be avoided.

6. Something to experiment with - This would work with the “puzzle” room.

7. Something the players probably won’t find - This exists outside the 5RD structure I think, but I do quite like the idea of tucking a hidden secret in there that only the most cunning players will find for some extra reward.

The Front Cover

Wow, that was some hard thinking. Who’s up for some pretty pictures?

My vision for the front cover is to provide support to the adventure hook, so an illustration from the POV of the PCs with the Colossus looming over them from the distance, half covered by the Ghost Dunes. I love JV West’s evocative verse at the start of GOZR too, and I had to do something similar, handwritten and raw.

One problem though: I’m not a particularly gifted artist, but it’s not for a lack of enthusiasm or enjoyment :) My process here was to sketch out some stuff in pencil drawing from references, like carefully posed toy robots, and Battletech and Gundam art for details. Unfortunately my neuro-spicey super powers do not extend to being able to see and hold mentally generated images in my minds eye with sustainable clarity, which definitely puts a crimp on my artistic aspirations!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, make sketches from references for the individual elements on different pieces of paper, pen over them with black POSCAs, then scan them into my PC. From there, pull them into a super old version of photoshop as individual layers, adjust the thresholds to restrict the image to pure black and white, delete the white and add the colour. Things like the hand-written text can be coloured, stroked, drop shadowed, resized, and repositioned too which is super helpful.

These are my penned over sketches:

And here’s a low res couple of photos of my monitor showing how the front cover is looking right now. I’m trying to decide if the Gooz in the foreground should have red or white highlights. I’m leaning towards red, what do you think?

The other thing I did was reach out to JV West and ask him about his 3rd party license for GOZR, which he’s kindly directed me towards. Following the terms of the license lets me put that cool little badge in the bottom corner of the work, and lends the work a degree of credibility.

Also, I think it’s polite right? To let the original creator know what you’re doing and get their blessing?

Conclusion

Phew, long one this. Sorry about that, I normally like to keep it concise. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, you’d be doing me a massive favour if you could share this post on your socials - see if we can build up a bit of hype, and keep me motivated to continue through engagement!

I’ll be posting another one of these as and when I’ve got something to report, so the posting schedule will exist outside the usual weekly cadence of posts.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this and want to make sure that you don’t miss any future updates, maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

Tension on a Timer: How Progress Clocks Keep Your Game Exciting

Word up my homes.

Today we’re going to talk about “Progress Clocks”. I think these were first introduced by John Harper with Blades in the Dark. (Correction 2025-03-12 I'm reliably informed that they were introduced first in Apocalypse World!) They weren’t the first solution to the particular problems they address, but I do think that they’re perhaps the most elegant.

You’ll understand in a bit.

Why Use a Progress Clock?

You’ve all felt that, right? That anticlimactic feeling that comes from presenting your players this mountain to climb, only for them to simply roll Athletics and pass. “Well done, you’re at the top, well that was dull”. Extreme example I know, but I’m trying to illustrate a point here :)

Experienced GMs might have other techniques for circumventing this problem, but Progress Clocks are for turning a single mechanical success or failure event into something that matches its theme. They’re for showing players exactly what the stakes are, and for managing their expectations regarding how they’re currently performing.

They prevent a couple of failed rolls from completely derailing the players’ current plan.

How does a Progress Clock work?

You draw a circle, and you divide it into a number of pizza slices. 3-6 slices is common, but you can go higher or lower to taste.

You then label that circle with the event that WILL happen once the clock is filled in, and you put it out in front of the players so that they understand what’s at stake.

Then as relevant in game activities take place, you colour in those pizza slices, representing the final event drawing closer. Depending on the sheer influence of the activity that has happened, you may wish to fill in more than one slice. You should also be open to the idea of filling in the entire clock in one go if the situation justifies it (or even disregarding the clock entirely) - You might have thought that something is quite big and complex and worthy of 8 slices, but your players might come up with something that deals with it in one swoop. You’ll know when it happens, don’t impede this.

I should note, it’s not just in game activity that might fill a clock, it might literally represent the passage of time itself.

When do you use a Progress Clock?

You know when you’re running a game and the players want to do something, you might call for a check, and if they succeed, happy days? Well, Progress Clocks are for when the action is too big or significant that it’s success or failure should fall down to a single mechanical event like a dice roll.

Likewise, imagine your players trying to break someone out of jail and there’s this really cool stealth session. Unfortunately they just failed a stealth roll and tripped over in front of a guard, so now the guards are alerted to their presence, and unless you the entire place to come down upon them over a simple misstep, you’ve got to tie yourself in narrative knots trying to justify why the first guard hasn’t just raised the alarm.

Or imagine if your players are trying to accomplish something before this other thing that they cannot affect happens. You might have two clocks here, one for the players progress and one for the other event.

What are the Types of Progress Clock?

Ticking Bomb (or even it’s inverse)

The Ticking Bomb Progress Clock represents how long until something terrible happens. In that time, they need to find a way to circumvent the problem or to prepare for it. This is the classic heist Progress Clock, representing how many mess ups PCs can make before the guards are alerted - in the meantime the PCs want to be in and out.

Competing

Competing Progress Clocks are used to show the progress of two separate events that do not influence each other. For example, the PCs might be trying to evacuate the village in the valley before the Dam breaks. The PCs might advance their clock by sounding the alarms, and guiding people across the bridge, and the Dam’s clock might advance as you roll a check to see if the crack in the damn wall is growing.

Tug of War

Possibly the most complicated to explain, there are two possible event outcomes, and you don’t start these clocks empty. Tug of War Progress Clocks represent two outcomes that DO influence each other. So if the PCs were running away from a monster, as the PCs succeeded in their checks they might fill the clock, and as they fail, then the clock empties. The outcomes in this case would be either a successful escape, or the Monster catching up to them.

Multiple

Not technically a type of clock, but there’s no reason why you can’t have a string of clocks together to accomplish a bigger thing. For example, if we go back to that heist example - The big picture might be “steal the gemstone” but you might present the players with the following clocks (again, allowing them to circumvent any that they reasonably find a work around for):

1. Deal with the guards

2. Make a route inside

3. Get past the traps

4. Evade the security investigating the alarm

5. Get back to the hideout

Conclusion

Nice, hopefully that makes sense to you. If you could use more information, checkout Sly Flourish’s video for extra guidance, or reach out to me on Bluesky.

By the way, I’m currently making a one shot adventure for GOZR called The Rusted Colossus, about a giant old mech that’s been uncovered in the desert. I’m planning on referencing this post, so that if people need pointers on Progress Clocks, they’ve got them. If you’ve come from there - this is time travel. Hello future people! I hope my adventure came out well :)

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

Random Encounters, Not Random Chaos: A GM’s Guide

Word up my peeps.

I finally broke the other day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was sharing my (shameless plug) fantastic free Encounter Timer app online and I’d just heard the same myth being spewed out too many times by people that have misunderstood, been misinformed and consequently have mentally closed the door.

“I don’t use random encounters in my games, I like all my encounters to be woven into my story, and I don’t want to cause a TPK just because the BBEG turns up unexpectantly and wipes the party”

There are probably legitimate reasons for not wanting to use random encounters (“I am cripplingly terrified of improvisation” for example), but this one sucks, and I hear versions of it all the time online, and frankly it is toxic, because other people will read it and then a good chunk of them accept and internalise it and then they go on to miss out too.

Perhaps this goes without saying, but Random Encounters are chuffing awesome. They make your world feel proactive and alive instead of this stale place that only seems to respond to the players presence, we create a convincing illusion of greater activity without burning ourselves out prepping to the Nth degree. Random encounters drive action and interesting situations. Use random encounters, but use them properly, and don’t use them exclusively - there’s nothing wrong with some set pieces.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yea, So this objection is like an onion, there’s so many layers to unpack here, wish me luck.

D&D is not a story, it’s a game

The first part to address is the easy one: “I like all my encounters to be woven into my story…“.

GM’s, there’s no delicate way for me to say this: It’s not ‘your story’.

Two things, firstly there is no “story” until after the fact. The story is what happened, not what will happen. If you find yourself controlling what will happen to the extent that the idea of a random encounter ruins your day, then you have too tight a grip on your game. In fact, I’d hesitate to even call it a game at this point - it’s more like you’re asking your ‘players’ to act through your screen play. You need to chill my dudes, embrace a little bit of improvisation and give the players, and even the dice some agency, they will thank you for it (not the dice though, they’re gits).

Point two: If this after-the-fact story belongs to anyone at all, then it belongs to everyone at the table, not just the GM. The GM’s role is not to pre-write a story to control how the adventure pans out (this is video game mentality), the GM’s role is to present interesting conflicts so that the players can resolve them, and then the GM reacts to those resolutions with fair consequences.

Rince & repeat, this is the core gameplay loop of TTRPGs, and it is what makes them unique and special.

Honestly - understanding and accepting this is the key to solving like 50% of all your GMing woes: be a bit more loosey goosey and roll with the flow, baby.

How to use Random Encounters

Rather than worrying about random encounters not fitting into your Lizards-Ate-My-Toast approved, predefined story beats, consider instead the current zeitgeist, a mood, a vibe specific to what is going on this session. If the players are currently investigating ‘The Crypt of the lich king, Misinformedarex’, then it absolutely wouldn’t make sense if an Aboleth rocked up and bust down the door to interrupt a long rest.

So, what do we do about this?

Simple: the Obi Wan Kenobi’s of the GMing world curate their random encounters. We don’t just pick a literal random creature from the Monster Manual, or an online generator - No! In our prep for the session, we spend 5 minutes building a d6 table of encounters that makes sense, so now nothing throws us a curve ball and we’re calm like prescient Jedi Masters.

To Darth “I don’t want to cause a TPK just because the BBEG turns up unexpectantly“, I say, if you don’t want this to happen, don’t put your BBEG in your random encounter table! Rocket science, it ain’t!

Trust your Players to Play

My dear reader, I know I just said don’t put your BBEG in your random tables buuuuuut I have a curve ball for you. A Wrigley worm of a caveat that I’m just dying to wave tantalisingly in front of your snouts. Go on, nibble it.

You shouldn’t be afraid to put something cataclysmic in your random table. Why not?

Mines of Moria. You know what the coolest thing about the Mines of Moria was? It was when the Fellowship are all making a successful run for it and they’re almost home free, and then Peter Jackson rolled a 2 on his Random Encounter check, followed by a 6, and he whipped out a mother trucking Balrog. The players knew that they were no match, so they chose to retreat, but Gandalf rolled high on his insight, and knew they wouldn’t make it without him buying them some time…

He was all like “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!“, and the Balrog was all like “ROROAAAGAHGHAGHH”, one minor quake spell, followed by a bitch whip slap and we just had the best moment of the movie so far, son.

How cool was that?! Think how much weaker that chapter would have been if the Fellowship just escaped because Peter Jackson kept fudging hundreds of his To Hit rolls on those Goblin archers, just to ensure the sanctity of his precious story?

Not all Random Encounters are combats

Wait there’s more! (Holy cow, it’s a second curve ball!!) You should use Reaction Tables hand in hand with your random encounters (but only when it’s not patently obvious what the reaction should be):

d6 | Reaction

1 | I hate your face and will rip it off and wear it as a loincloth

2 | I am grumpy as chuff and have a short fuse

3 | Halt! Who goes there?!

4 | Ahoy!

5 | Oh sure, I can help you with that

6 | You have my sword! (And my Axe!)

The deal here is that the higher the dice roll, the friendlier the disposition on the thing you’ve encountered.

This way, all of a sudden not every encounter is a fight. Mixes it up, keeps players on their toes. If your curated encounter table tells you it’s a Banshee, but also you get a middling 3 on your reaction table, that’s where you have some quick thinking to do.

Maybe the Banshee is sad, inquisitive players might notice this and assuming they are cool with her, she opens up to them and tells them that she wants to be released from undeath to be with her lover, and the only way to do it is [insert clue about the dungeon boss here]. Wait - Holy smokes, did we just enrich the “Story” with a random encounter??!

Encounter Clues!

A triple curve ball! This post is like a whirlwind! Brace yourself, here it comes:

Not every encounter needs to be: “Bam! Thing, in your face, go!”

Good people of Earth, behold! I have a third table for you which modifies the encounter again, let’s call it a Perception Table:

d6 | Perception

1 | Shhh, they’re sleeping

2 | I can hear them talking in the next area

3 | I can hear them approaching, unaware of us

4 | Bam! Thing in your face, Go!

5 | They know we’re here and by the thunder of their feet, they’re coming!

6 | Ahhhck, where did they come from!

What’s the point of this? It gives the players options, they could hide, they could set up an ambush, they could reroute a different way, they could set a trap… I’m sure the list goes on.

The point is, it adds layers of interesting conflicts for your players to resolve - and remember, that is literally the game.

Conclusion

Random encounters are a powerful tool to create interesting conflicts, not something to be feared. Let go of your controlling grip, embrace improvisation. Oh, also, go back to my other post and checkout my Encounter Timer app!

If you still don’t believe me, that’s OK. I hope at least I made you smile. If I didn’t even manage that, then please accept my humblest apologies and maybe I’ve not lost you forever :)

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

GOZR: The Wacky, Wild, Weird, and W’excellent TTRPG You’ve Been Sleeping On

Angry sky bleeds upon a fallen world.

Sky Wyrms hunt meat.

Fallen towers radiate fading spells.

Pretty ones rot in the dirt. Lost.

The Gooz rise.

S’up dawgs. Today’s post is about GOZR. If you follow me on Bluesky, you’ve probably seen me post about it a few times already, including some of my fan art. If you love the OSR, gonzo post-apocalyptic settings, or still have that subscription to Heavy Metal magazine, you’ll love GOZR.

GOZR (presumably a portmanteau of Gooz & OSR) was released in 2022 after a successful Kickstarter, so you might be forgiven for asking why the hell I’m dredging it up now in 2025? Well, because it’s my blog and I like GOZR, and I feel like it’s massively been ignored by the world and that’s a damned shame. If little old me can make a smidgen of a difference and highlight the worthwhile work of an artist, and maybe persuade a couple of you good folks to part with a few pennies of your hard earned pocket money, then all’s the better I say.

I ain’t getting paid or any cutback for this though, I should add. This is all genuine affection on my part, and not financially motivated.

What in the name of sweet baby medusa is GOZR?

It’s a bold, handwritten (as in, no fonts) TTRPG by JV West, of Black Pudding infamy, set in a totally wacky post apocalyptic world. Tongues are firmly in cheeks with this setting and it’s inhabitants, which makes for a nice lighthearted game at the table. As of right now, there’s only the rulebook, and a fill-in-the-blanks one page adventure that have been released officially, the rulebook is both available as a physical book and as a PDF, and the adventure is a free download from JV’s website.

The general style of the game is OSR (which means rules-lite, fast, creative, and clever play), which is nice because it frees up player imagination and means that the GM doesn’t have to carry a small library’s worth of books around with them. Some people might prefer a much chonkier game that has explicit bespoke mechanics designed for various scenarios that barely arise, and a number of video-game like character abilities baked into a class system, but GOZR ain’t that, and that’s A-OK with me.

More than anything though, GOZR is a work of art, dude. It’s heavy on vibes, heavy on inspirational GM content (like tables), and very very heavy on illustrations.

Like seriously, if I had to guess, I’d say it was weighted at about 70% tables & improvisation cues, 20% art, and 10% rules!

You goad me wizard, I would have you speak of the setting, plain and true!

Much of the official cannon of the setting is left to the GMs imagination, but piecing together the snippets of text and other clues, this is what I like to think:

In the near future, humanity manages to create an extinction event for itself via screwing around directly with the Sun. This triggers erratic behavior in Sol, unleashing freakish meteorological events that scar the world.

Years later, in the wake of Humanity’s passing, a new humanoid species comes to dominate the planet. The Gooz: at first glance, an unworthy race—slightly diminutive, superstitious, Sol-worshipping, ingenious yet adventurous. They have the cunning of goblins and the foolhardy curiosity of a feline. Yet somehow, the Gooz have built a flourishing civilization. Many brave souls tread beyond the boundaries of GOZR City, seeking treasure, answers, or both among the ruins of strange 'magical' towers left behind by 'the pretty ones'.

This world is a dangerous place, not least because of the ever changing whims of Sol, but all the Robots, Sky Wyrms, M’rons, Ickmucks and more have spread unchecked, and would make a tasty treat of a hapless Gooz.

Does it play as well as Slash on a skateboard, casually rolling down the road outside a bar & grill?

The game engine is based on a familiar d20 roll over AC system, but unlike D&D, there are only 3 stats and all rolls are player facing. This is nice because the players get to roll more, and everyone loves rolling bones!

Additionally, the core engine also has a system built into it which codifies degrees of success, and failing forwards. This means that flat “no” is a rare occurrence, and instead we’re much more likely to see “No, but…”, “Yes, but…”, and “Yes and…” which are integral components of modern improvisation techniques, and more games would benefit from the same emphasis.

Gameplay is simultaneously very deadly and very forgiving. Damage dice explode and HP is low, but this is actually my favourite rule: When a Gooz “dies” (at zero HP) the player can make a choice between “Death or Debasement”. The latter means your Gooz survives, but at a cost to their stats or abilities. The former means that your Gooz did indeed die, but you get a bonus to the stats of your next Gooz!

Plus, rolling up a Gooz is such a joy, following JV’s step by step guide you end up creating this wonderfully weird little Jim Henson meets Heavy Metal crossover!

A flawed gem

It’s only fair for me to point out the two flaws I see with GOZR (albeit ones with solutions) - it’s not all love and sunshine. Firstly, while it’s a joy to behold as a work of art, the book isn’t the easiest to use as a rules reference. There’s just so much going on all over the place that you could spend a long time simply enjoying a single page without finding the rule you were looking for.

Luckily, your old buddy Jimmi has you covered, I’ve created a free comprehensive cheat sheet for you to print out at home. I’m too good to you all, I really am.

The other niggle I have with the game is that it lacks examples of play, or an included introductory adventure.

This is a shame in my view, as such things can be really valuable as tools to manage a GMs expectations and set them up running straight away. JV did write an adventure which is published on his website, but for me, it leans too strongly on the idea that GM’s can make adventures their own, and I’d have preferred it, as a starter adventure, to have had more specifics to save me some brain juice. For example, a more structured adventure might include a specific room layout, or pre-written NPCs.

This is not a show stopper by any means though, as there are many adventures out there on the internet that can be adapted quite easily to suit the game or you might even enjoy making up your own using the game’s innumerable world generation tables.

Conclusion

Go buy GOZR right now.

It ticks all the boxes - It’s made with indie love, packed with art, not expensive, easy to learn, fun to play, and a joy to read. Honestly I’d love to see more people playing this game, giving it the love it deserves.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

I Have Single Handedly Revoloutionised Random Encounters. Maybe

Arguably, this post IS an advert, but it’s for something cool that I made myself and that I’m giving away to you for free.

Alternate title options for this post included:

• “I am the greatest and biggliesty minded GM app developer that the world has ever seen!”

• “Your random encounters suck! I am Batman.”

• “Yes, I know, I feel it too.”

Ha, I’m feeling pretty self satisfied today, I’ve finished developing an app to help GMs remember to run random encounters at the table, and I want to tell you all about it.

Ain’t Nobody Got Time For ‘Dungeon Turns’

Man alive I am so bad at remembering to run random encounters. I think they’re a great idea because as long as the possible range of encounters has been curated in a sensible way, they make the given environment seem alive, and stop environments from becoming this static place that only reacts to the presence of PCs when they trigger location based events. Buuuuut the old school method of tracking “dungeon turns” on a piece of paper, and then rolling a d6 after every turn to see if you get a 1 to trigger an encounter has two major problems for me:

• Enforcing “turns” during exploration feels like it detracts too much from my free flow style of play. Arbitrarily saying “OK you’ve all done a thing, and I’ve decided that was 10 dungeon minutes - time to run some dungeon checks”, always felt quite forced at my table.

• Crucially, I always forget to track dungeon turns and roll for encounters. I’m too busy reacting to the players and following the gameplay to remember to stop everything and trigger a dungeon turn. Maybe I’m just old and my memory is failing me!

Blatantly inspired by Shadowdark’s use of real timers for tracking torch light - my app enables the GM to ‘set it and forget it’ so an appropriate but “random” timer starts ticking down towards an encounter trigger.

The best way to understand its purpose is just as with manually rolling d6s to check for encounters, you know an encounter WILL happen eventually, it’s just a matter of HOW LONG will it take, which is information that’s hidden from the players. My app just means that the GM doesn’t have to think about it or track it manually mid game.

How Does the Encounter Timer App Work?

When the app boots up you’ll be presented with the main screen which gives you a number of options to engage with.

Encounter Frequency Range:

Enter in the lowest and highest value in seconds that you want the next encounter to activate between. By default these values are set to 300 and 900 (5 and 15 minutes).

Encounter Countdown Timer:

When the timer is running, this will countdown to zero then trigger an audible alert to remind GMs to activate their encounter.

During the countdown, if the player characters actions are drawing lots of attention to themselves you can tap the timer to reduce the countdown by 25% with each tap. You cannot take the timer below 10 seconds this way.

Mid:

Tap to have the app pick a random number in seconds between your Encounter Frequency Range, and commence the countdown.

Good for exploring areas of normal danger levels.

High:

As with Mid, but halves the random number generated.

For exploring areas with a higher likelihood of encounter.

||:

Pause and play the current timer.

X:

Cancel the timer and return it to zero (without triggering the alarm).

Encounter Timer in action

What Else Do You Need To Know?

1. It’s Android 5.0 and over only - sorry Apple people, but I have a Google Pixel 7a and I don’t have the knowledge to create this for non android architecture. If any Fruit based developers out there want to remake it, that’s cool with me.

2. It’s exclusively available to subscribers of the Mailer of Many Things as a free reward. It is not available on app stores.

3. At time of writing, the app is free, and is completely unmonitised. No ads, trackers, or any other shady money grabbing behaviour. I have no intention of this ever changing.

4. It’s an APK file, which is an executable installation file that you should run from your Android phone. By default, many phones don’t let you install things manually like this because the app has not been verified by Google, and instead prompt you to enable this functionality in your settings.

5. I am a backend cloud database developer by trade with limited front end programming skills, so I created and compiled this app using Kodular. I accept no responsibility for anything unexpected that happens when installing or using this software. To the very best of my knowledge, the app is safe and functions only as described.

6. The app works best in conjunction with preprepared encounter tables that have been tailored by the GM to the player characters current environment. The apps only purpose is to remind you that it’s time for an encounter - what the encounter is remains entirely up to you.

7. I may actually be Batman.

conclusion

I can’t wait to run a game using this, and I’ve already got some ideas about additional functionality. If you end up trying it out, please, please, please let me know how you got on and if you have any suggestions.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

3 More GM Crutches that Hold Your Game Back

Now then, have we all had a good week? Are we feeling ready for round 2? Good, lets continue.

Hopefully you’ve tossed away the first 2 big crutches identified in last weeks post, and you’re already starting to reap the rewards of a freer game. Well, now I’ve got 3 more crutches that hold your game back, and you should seriously consider binning these too.

3) Artistic, Player Facing, Playable Maps

Yes, yes, they look cool, but outside of sparing use for set piece battles like “boss fights”, they just take the game towards video game territory. You see, the thing with video games is that the best video game is a video game, so stop trying to be a video game and be a TTRPG instead and play to those strengths.

Why do we use them?

• Maps look cool, and give a certain wow factor.

• They take the pressure off when describing locations - you can just point at the map instead.

• Players with minis or tokens are able to pin point their location.

Why are they bad?

• If you rely upon them, they limit your encounters to only situations where you have a relevant map handy.

• When you’re using them to gradually reveal a location, then the players can’t help but metagame and notice areas that they have not explored - making exploration less about in game experience and more about how much of the map has been revealed.

• Players will take the map as gospel and stop using their imagination. If the map doesn’t specifically show a chandelier then the players are much less likely to ask if there is one for them to shoot down on top of the mob of Goblins.

What is the alternative?

Depending on what is more appropriate for the moment, you should use either theatre of the mind, or quickly draw up a rough map on a Chessex grid. If we’re talking about mapping out a dungeon then let the players do that themselves in their notes.

Gridded battle maps are massively over-used in my experience, and they only really have value in two situations: The battle is very tactical and positioning is very important, or you’re filming an actual play and you want to give your audience something to look at.

Theatre of the mind is generally considered old school, but it’s just as applicable today as it ever was for filling the gaps when gridded maps are not suitable. Big monster? TotM. Horror game? TotM. Small scuffle? TotM. The idea here is that with a couple of prompts, the players imagination and questions will create something far cooler than you can describe, and it really isn’t important that everyone is imagining a slightly different thing.

If you struggle to describe environments, start with the areas utility: “It’s a Kitchen” - At that point you don’t need to describe the sink or the fridge, players have already filled in those blanks. You can move on to identifying the key objects in the room that the players might want to engage with like the discolored brick above the stove, and the stinky open casserole pan on the table.

4) Rule Expansion Books

Ho boy, this is a contentious one.

They’re the worst for this by far, so I’ll pick on them - Since 2014 Lizards Ate Your Toast have released a boat load of 5e expansion books (not counting adventure modules) all containing new rules and stats, sold under the guise of enabling your players to do/experience more things.

If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you.

I get it, they’re a business and we want our favourite games to succeed, and for them to succeed then the business needs to sell stuff. Catch 22. Well as far as I’m concerned the onus is on them to produce something that actually has value - like a good module.

Why do we use them?

• Marketing hype?

• Sunk cost fallacy?

• At some base level we believe that teams of TTRPG scientists have sat down meticulously testing all the rules to ensure their perfection, and that if the game does or doesn’t allow for a specific ability then it must be for good reason. Therefore when the new book is released that has rules for blowing your nose, we go wild because our PCs have had blocked sinuses for weeks and this is just what we’ve been waiting for. Picture the scene: “You look down at your tissue, make a DC12 Religion check to determine if you see the face of God”.

Why are they bad?

• Rules expansion books are mega expensive, and they don’t hold their value when you’ve decided that you don’t need them anymore.

• Because they have to justify their £50 price point, these books pad in pages and pages of unnecessary complication to their rules, which makes the total system less elegant and slower in play.

• They create a culture that says you’re only allowed to do the thing if the rules specifically say that you can.

What is the alternative?

If the system is any good then it should have a core rules language that is easy to understand and widely applicable. The 5e game system is actually an example of this - roll a d20, add modifiers and score higher than a DC to do the thing.

As GMs you need to throw off the shackles of looking to rules supplements for rulings for new things, instead you can use the existing rules language to house rule any situation.

If you want to see how other GMs have handled a situation, the web is full of blogs and videos with free content. For example, check out my stuff on inventory management.

5) Pre-Planning Solutions

I used to do this when I started out GMing. It’s part of that same video game mentality that dictates that everything should be balanced. Eugh.

So for example, you’re doing this when you put a chasm between the players and their goal, and also a tree that is partially fallen, that would span the gap if only the players gave it some encouragement.

Why do we use them?

• We pre-plan solutions because we’re obsessed with the idea that the game should be “balanced”. Video games have taught us that all problems have one solution that was designed by the developers and we carry this thought process over to TTRPGs as well.

• We cling to the hope that if the solutions pan out the way we design, then the game will go the direction we envision. Then there won’t be any difficult moments at the table where we have to think on our feet.

Why are they bad?

• By restricting all problems to only those that we can think of a solution to, we’re limiting our own creative expression as a GM.

• Your problems tend to lean to all having the same solution.

• It makes session planning a lot more like hard work if you have to stop every time you introduce a conflict to verify that it has a solution.

• If all problems have to be solved the way you intended, then the players have no agency. That’s a boring experience.

What is the alternative?

Trust your players to find a way, and be prepared to say yes to it.

That’s good GM advice right there - Default to yes, unless there’s a very good internal consistency reason not to.

Whilst we’re at it, throw off the shackles of expecting everything to go the way you designed - no plan survives contact with the enemy, so learn to embrace the chaos of thinking on your feet. Use random tables if you need on the spot inspiration for what the next challenge should be.

conclusion

We got there! I sure hope I didn’t lose any loyal readers with these two frankly quite ranty posts, but sometimes you just gotta vent, ya know? I promise that this is all good advice, and although none of it should be taken as 100% applicable 100% of the time, you should use your judgement and I reckon your games will improve.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

These 2 Expensive GM Crutches are Actually Traps, I Have Alternatives

Ahoy there, welcome aboard. I’m feeling spicy today so it’s time to drop some meta disruptive truth bombs.

I’m absolutely swimming against the tide here, so some of you won’t agree with this post, and that’s A-OK because we’re still friends and one of us will change our mind eventually as we grow and become better GMs for it, and then we shall fondly look back upon this post from a position of supreme transcendence and inner harmony. Zen.

As it is written, shall it be so.

Lets start with defining terminology. What do I mean by crutches and traps?

Well, a crutch is simply something that you introduce to make a task easier, and you should - seeking crutches is 100% the right thing to do. For example, a GM screen is a crutch because it can give the GM helpful improv prompts and reminders for key rules.

A trap however is something that initially appears to be solely beneficial, but not only does it create a dependency, it also has a hidden detrimental effect on your game, such as a GM fudging dice rolls to help their players, leading to a game suffering for its lack of stakes or player agency (told you I was feeling spicy).

1) Miniatures

Minis are cool, I like to collect them, I like to paint them, I like to use them in miniature war games. I totally get the appeal here.

Why do we use them?

• Minis allow the GM to relax their descriptions of monsters - you don’t need to give a massive description if players can just see the mini, right?

• Minis allow us to demonstrate where the actor is on a battle map.

• Minis look cool, they create more of a spectacle.

Why are they bad?

• Minis are expensive, difficult to store, and take a long time to paint.

• Minis tend to limit our encounters to the models that we have in our collection, and that we have brought with us to the game. This means that if we want to improv an encounter mid game that we don’t have minis for then we’ve got a problem.

• It also means that players may see your minis before the encounter, and then know what’s coming.

• When players pour hours of effort into a mini, that creates a conflict of interest for the GM. No one wants to be the a$$hole that kills the character that Billy has spent the last 2 weeks painstakingly preparing.

What is the alternative?

Tokens. Generic tokens. Sly flourish did a great service to the community with these and they work perfectly, because rather than needing a specific token for a goblin, you can use the hooded face token. Got a big brute? Cool, use the token in the armoured helmet. Being attacked by a group of beasts? Use the animal skulls.

Not only that, but each token within a group is lettered, so that players can say “I want to attack goblin C” instead of trying to work out which goblin they mean.

On top of this:

• They’re robust.

• Easy to store

• Cheap and easy to replace

• You don’t need many

• They’re multi purpose

Image credited to Sly Flourish

I’m planning on making and selling a set of my own soon, subscribe to the Mailer of Many Things, my monthly newsletter if you want to be kept up to date about when they’re available.

2) Automation Tools

When I was first starting out with 5e I found the character creation process so complicated that a tool like D&D Beyond was really useful as it took players through the process of character creation step by step, and did all the calculations for modifiers behind the scenes. Then the developers sold it to a company whose name might rhyme with Lizards Ate Your Toast, and the enshittification began.

But it’s not just D&D Beyond this applies to. Many digital toolsets such as virtual tabletops (VTTs) have these same issues whenever they have processes that script elements together.

Why do we use them?

• Many processes in TTRPGs are complicated, scripted automation allows us to focus on the fun role play instead without burdening the players with having to understand the behind the scenes mechanics of the game.

• They stop us forgetting about important mechanics.

Why are they bad?

• They’re very expensive. At time of writing, D&D Beyond can cost over $70 for a monthly subscription over a single year.

• If the GM wants to homebrew some new mechanical effects on the spot, these tools either do not allow for that, or they force the game to grind to a halt whilst the GM deciphers a complicated process to integrate their ideas into the system.

• Heaven forbid if you trigger an automated action by mistake. Automation tools frequently script a string of effects into motion that need carefully unpicking. For example, if you mistakenly roll to fire a gun in Alien RPG, that might subtract ammo. If you miss, it may trigger a stress roll, which triggers a panic roll, which may fail, then that might automatically alter your PCs stats.

What is the alternative?

I don’t mean this to sound dismissive, but simply get everyone to learn how the game works so that they can perform the games processes manually.

• You should use your first session to teach everyone the game and help them all build characters.

• If the game has really obtuse processes, play a simpler game. “Complicated” rarely equates to “better”. In fact, complicated games are a sure sign of bad design. And I’m a poet and I didn’t know it.

• Use game agnostic VTTs like Owlbear Rodeo which have a free tier, and do not contain scripted automations.

Conclusion

Phew! This is a longer post than I thought it’d be. I’ll discuss Player Facing Maps, Planned Outcomes, and Rule Expansion Books in a later post, this text will be linked if I’ve written it yet.

I hope these first two traps disguised as crutches have been eye opening for you, and that you’re able to kick the habit using the alternatives I’ve proposed. If you have additional alternatives, why not join the discussion on Bluesky?

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

campaign modules drag on, run episodic games instead

Yo. Before I begin, this article makes a critical point about modern TTRPG campaigns, and I’m drawing on my lived in experience to do so.

So dear reader, I don’t know about you, but I think that there’s a cultural expectation that RPG campaigns should go on for months - I’ve ran a few myself over the years this way, and despite them starting out strongly, 5+ sessions in, I start to find myself losing interest and I suspect that my players do too. Do you think that’s a common experience? I think it might be.

That got me speculating as to why, and I have conclusions. I also think that Episodic play might be the solution.

Event Based Campaigns

Campaigns in the modern “I just picked up a module for my game and it’s the size of a university text book” sense often follow a predefined interactive story. They’re “event based”, which means they’re formatted so that ‘this’ happens, and then ‘this’ happens, and then “this” happens, and it’s all packed with filler between these set story beats.

D&D 5e literally trains DMs to run games like this with it’s various linear starter sets and modules.

I theorise that running campaigns this way also demonstrates to your players that they should expect to be passive consumers of whatever you have planned for the evening, rather than lead actors with agency, driving their own experience.

For example, Lost Mines of Phandelver is often considered a great module for 5e, and indeed it’s first two chapters are very enjoyable as quasi one shot experiences, both can be completed in an evening and both are simple enough so that the players know what they’re doing - Rescue Sildar Hallwinter from the Goblin Cave, and save Phandalin from the tyranny of the Red Brands respectively.

However, when the third act begins, the story introduces a number of tangents - the game opens up and the players are expected to investigate Phandalin themselves to identify adventure opportunities and follow whatever path they like. Only… we’ve just spent the last couple of sessions very obviously pointing at the objective and saying “this is where the adventure goes next”, and now, without warning we whip the training wheels off the railroad and expect the players not to fall over? It’s a big ask.

Inevitably this results in a whole lot of nothing, to recap - the players have been primed to believe that the DM is going to hit them over the head with the next quest, and instead they’re just being fed a series of small off-plot hooks about things going on in the wider world. Analysis paralysis kicks in, and the session slows down to a crawl. Engagement takes a hit.

Losing the plot

If the players are expected to engage enthusiastically with prewritten story beats, then it needs to be focused - like a one shot. In fact, in one shots I think pre-defined stories work really well because the players get a satisfying hook and resolution all whilst they still have interest.

Contrast that against the real time gap between sessions in Event Based Campaigns where the players and GMs can lose track of plot threads and hooks, and questions like “I don’t know what’s going on?” or “Why are we going over here again?” start creeping into play. Not to mention how it becomes increasingly difficult to have each session end on a cliffhanger and start with a bang!

I do believe that this is inevitable too - almost by definition, in large event based campaigns that take months, the plot, the players and GMs will lose focus, and that will damage the game.

Again in LMoP, by the time everyone has adjusted to the total change of pace and investigated the Thundertree and Old Owl Well tangents in the third act, that’s been maybe 4 or 5 sessions. That could easily be about 2 months in real time! Of course everyone has forgotten about the central premise surrounding Gundren Rockseeker, the Black Spider, and Wave Echo Cave!

Sandbox play

Sandbox play is something we often hear about, and it’s something I wish I could get to work correctly, but I think it requires everyone to fully buy in to an exploration focused game up front. Essentially it places the onus on the players to explore and find their own adventure, and the GM has no sense of what’s going to happen more than one session in advance because the game’s narrative is driven by whatever the players discover and are interested in pursuing.

However, games like 5e fight against this with no real mechanics to support exploration, and plenty of mechanics that actively nullify the challenge that exploration should present. These all combine to make a 5e sandbox game quite the hard sell.

Conversely, if everyone at the table is up for this type of game, and you’ve got a game engine that supports it, then I think that sandbox style play is one solution to the problem of campaign games losing momentum, because there’s no overarching plot to lose track of, and the players have 100% agency over the direction of the game.

I should note, I do not think you can “sandboxify” a linear module. It’s got to be one or the other to maintain player expectations - either the campaign has predefined story beats that the players expect to receive, or the players expect to drive their own story. Any combination of the two creates a contradiction in expectations, and leads to unsatisfying games. Trust me, I’m guilty of this and it doesn’t work.

Episodic Play

OK, I firmly believe that there’s nothing wrong with predefined story beats, and in fact my only criticism of this style is that it’s easy to lose interest when it goes on too long, and this is where episodic play comes in.

Episodic play is best thought of as a series of one shots, kind of like a pre Netflix TV show, where it is understood that a suitable chunk of time has elapsed between each loosely connected episode. In this new zeitgeist, BBEG’s rarely last longer than a couple of sessions, and neither do plots.

It’s a style particularly suited to games where the content is clearly defined up front and a clear resolution is available after just one or two sessions. For example, I have an ongoing Call of Cthulhu game that works like this - the players all know that they’re part of an investigative agency, and when we want to play, I offer them up a choice of one shots that I’m interested in running.

When it comes to game time, I give them some background to say how long has passed since the last adventure, and point out any relevant things that might have happened off screen, then I reiterate what this adventure is about and throw them straight into the action.

When run in this way, I find episodic play has huge advantages:

• Each session starts with a clear hook and players can jump straight into the action and wrap up with a satisfying conclusion.

• Players with conflicting schedules can drop in and out from one game to the next without disrupting the verisimilitude.

• As a GM, you can explore a wide variety of themes, locations, and even BBEGs without being tied to a rigid continuous storyline. You can even seamlessly integrate published one shots.

• Players can try new PCs or revisit old favorites whenever they like.

• PCs don’t have plot armour anymore, and will be played according to these stakes.

• Players get to choose the type of session they want to play next.

• You can even play different games altogether between episodes, there’s nothing complicated to remember regarding a plot so there’s no harm in it.

There is a potential downside though - depending on your groups availability. In order to get a satisfying story in, I find that you have to set aside 5 or 6 hours of play. Of course you can break it up into smaller sessions, but then we run the risk of us all losing the plot and the focus, so perhaps be prepared to play for longer, but less frequently.

Conclusion

If you have GM burn out, or the game lacks focus, or if you just want to try lots of new TTRPGs or adventures, then you should try running episodic style games. You can even use this as a low barrier to entry way of getting new players involved, or for converting players into GMs!

Please reach out with your opinions if you have them, I’m always interested in what you have to say. I’m on Bluesky or you could use my contact form.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

Using time as ttrpg currency to press urgency

Hey there, I’ve got a bit of a crazy idea in my head. A few months ago I watched a sci-fi movie called “In Time” starring Justin Trousersnake. It was OK to be honest, the hook was that in a dystopian future traditional currency is replaced with ‘life-time’.

The way this worked, upon birth people were augmented with a system that stopped them biologically aging at the point of early adulthood, but at that exact transitional moment, a clock on their wrist starts ticking backwards, counting down the rest of their lifespan.

This life-time as it’s known, is then traded as a currency, your wages are paid in life-time, and you buy your food and pay your rent with life-time.

The film was attempting to make a very blunt point about the modern low tax, low regulation, free-market Western economy, so of course - this situation empowers those that are ahead to get further ahead. It leads to the lower classes getting paid poverty wages forcing them to turn to loan sharks, gambling and criminal activities to survive.

As far as the film’s story goes, life-time creates frenetic pressure on Mr. Trousersnake as he’s literally in a race against time to save his mum, the girl, and the entirety of society from the evils of cAPiTaliSM.

Using real timers in games

OK, carpark that for a second, because now I’m going to talk about Shadowdark RPG and then rein it all back together again.

There’s a cool mechanic in Shadowdark whereby whenever you light a torch, you set a timer going on your phone for 60 minutes. At the end of the timer, the torch goes out. This serves to keep the urgency up and stop the players from becoming too cautious, it encourages them to take creative risks and makes the game much more action packed.

It’s method contrasts against OSR D&D which tries to solve the same problem, but it instead measures the passage of time abstractly using “dungeon turns” as 10 minute blocks per round of player actions (Modern D&D doesn’t bother with any of this, and just encourages hand waving it away).

While Shadowdark’s real-time method isn’t perfect, since the flow of in-game time rarely matches real-world time, it feels more organic and immersive. Traditional dungeon turns require conscious discipline to do right, and can easily feel rigid and boardgame-like, requiring bookkeeping that can bog down gameplay.

All that said, on balance, if you’re used to abstracting anyway, using real timers won’t break verisimilitude, and the Shadowdark method works well.

OK, so what’s the big idea Jimmi - this blog is meant to be about getting to the point?

OK, OK, sheesh. You’ve probably put two and two together by now, or read the title of this post, so I’ll get to the point.

In sci-fi games, what if we applied ‘life-time’ to track player character wealth? You could have them set a timer on their phone which you could add to and subtract from manually as the situation required.

Players could steal life-time from enemies or have it stolen from them. They might raid a bank where dormant life-time is stored on USB-style devices or loan time to desperate NPCs.

My theory is that, like in Shadowdark, that this would drive the player activity and create a sense of urgency at the table, effectively getting rid of those sessions where everyone mulls around with analysis paralysis.

As a bonus, it’d also take care of having to manually account for the weight and amount of your character’s currency!

Conclusion

Using life-time in this way feels like it could be a game changer, but I’ve not tried it myself yet, so I’m going to integrate it into future games of Mothership to see how I get on with it. Mothership specifically seems like a good fit to me, since the tone of the game is all dystopian future and economic horror anyway, but you might be able to bake it into your fantasy games - magic is a thing! Get in touch if you have any thoughts about it. I’m on Bluesky or you could use my contact form.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

These are the best death rules for your rpg

…in my opinion

Before we get started, I want to be straight with you. This post contains links to my new online zazzle store - tldr: I designed a mug… because I’m peculiar and I think it’s funny. You don’t need to buy the mug, if you like these death rules, just use your own.

Oh, whilst I’m writing disclaimers, this D&D house rule of mine is inspired by the death rules in Mothership 1e, which is a fantastic little game by Tuesday Knight Games.

setup

You are going to need an opaque mug, cup or similar vessel, and you’re going to need a handful of d20s.

how to use the best death rules

The moment a player character goes down in battle, you take a d20 and you hide it under the mug. You put the mug out on the table for all to see. For every player turn that the character remains “down” you hide another d20 under the mug, this is important, so don’t forget!

At this point, no one knows the status of the character, all we know is that the longer they’re down, the more dice they’re getting, and the worse their odds of survival. Feel that tension baby!

The spicy bit

When another character goes to revive the downed character, be it during or after battle, using a spell or just a stabilising action, that’s when the fun begins.

The player making the revive action first shakes the mug, and reveals the d20s within. Read them as follows, with later conditions superseding earlier ones:

Condition 1) If at least 3 dice show a result of less than 11, the character is dead.

Condition 2) If any dice show a result of natural 1, the character is dead.

Condition 3) If any dice show a result of natural 20, the character is alive. (This overrules condition 1)

Condition 4) If multiple dice show results of 1 and 20, they cancel each other out. (This overrules conditions 2 and 3)

If the character is dead, the revive action fails.

Why do this?

Characters die, and the moment should be a glorious tension dripping swan song of nail biting action! Standard D&D rules (for example) rob you of this because everyone at the table knows your exact condition at all times, so there’s no need to rush over to cast healing word on you if you’ve already rolled 2 public successes on your death saves.

With my rules, You could be dead on turn 1. You could be dead even if they cast healing word on you immediately. The only thing players know for sure is that the longer they leave you face down in the dirt, the greater the odds are that you’ve stabbed your last goblin. Also, other than a natural 20, there is no way to ‘self stabilise’.

This creates a beautiful sense of urgency at the table, suddenly, someone going down is a cause for massive alarm that requires an immediate response. All the while, waiting patiently, the downed player has no idea if it’s already too late, sitting there grinning with anticipation, half imagining their next character…

About that mug I mentioned…

Because I’m peculiar, I thought it would be funny to actually make a specific mug for this purpose, so I designed one using royalty free art and stuck it up on Zazzle. “The Mug Of Death” amuses me greatly, and it has the best death rules laid out on it.

The Mug of Death
by DomainOfManyThings

I know what you’re thinking, and to respond your very reasonable question: The image on the mug is intentionally upside down, because the mug is meant to be flipped over during play to hide the dice. When it is correctly oriented, everyone will be able to read the image as:

If you want one here’s the link to buy one from Zazzle (your transaction is entirely with them). I get a kickback from them, and it helps me keep the lights on.

But seriously (and I cannot stress this enough), just use a mug you have kicking around in your kitchen instead! Unless you’re peculiar too of course, in which case thank you very much in advance.

Conclusion

So that’s it, use these death rules to make character’s going down a spicier occasion, and then bask like a sea lion on the rocks of tension it creates!

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.