- KamCon 2026 Recap!
KamCon 2026 was awesome! With Gabriel and Alyssa coming in from the East and Chelsea and me coming from the - WatcherDM Summer Update 2026
What’s WatcherDM been up to in the Summer of ’26? Tons! It was May last time I (Austin) posted here. - How Deadly are OSR Games?
OSR games are deadly… but, what does this even mean? I did a flip through review of the Cairn 2e - Magic Masks for DnD
The best magic items in Dnd are those that reveal the Player Characters; what’s more revealing than a mask? Use - Tattoo Goblins
Tattoo Goblins are among the most feared hazards of the Shri-Lat Mountain Pass. Not terribly deadly, the Tattoo Goblin is - Depthcrawls and Dice
There’s no wrong way to play a TTRPG. But is there a wrong way to write a depthcrawl? I recently - Picking a Blood Prairie Class
The Blood Prairie Player’s Guide is almost done! What class are you going to play? We’re into final edits on - An Elf-Game to Rule Them All
It all began with the forging of the Elf-Games. Three were given to the dungeon-crawlers; immortal, wisest and fairest of - Troika Zombies
We’ve been playing a Zombie survival-horror game of Troika. Now I’m all fired up about the Living Dead! I want - One-Shot Tips from the Blood Prairie
I recently wrote up a Blood Prairie One-Shot and ran it for three different groups. Here’s the post-mortem, plus a - Character Moments for Mothership
We’ve got some character-developing moments for Mothership today, but first: TCTC is over! Long live TCTC! Oh, we had a - Refuting Jasonite’s Horror RPG Rules
Today we’re looking at Jasonite’s ‘Structural Criteria’ for Horror RPGs: well-written, thoroughly thought out, and (in my opinion) totally wrong. - Sick in Spring
Friends, I am unwell today. Some runny-nosed little goblin finally succeeded in infecting me. I am laid low by an - Troika Skill Analysis
We’re taking a break from our usual exercises in imagination to do something a little more sober: a comprehensive breakdown - 8-Bit Shadowdark!
The 8-Bit Shadowdark Game Jam is over! Long live the 8-bit Shadowdark Jam! Hosted by Dungeon Masterpiece‘s Baron de Ropp, - d66 NPC Travellers of Troika
It’s NPC day in Troika, bay-bee! Random Table below! Feel free to skip ahead! We’ve been hexcrawling around the Megamidden - Alternate Mothership Panic Effects
Looking for a more catastrophic Mothership Panic table? Look no further! Mothership is awesome. Like a truly great horror movie, - Fallout Equipment for Troika
Today, we present the missing keystone of our Fallout-inspired post-apocalyptic hack for Troika: equipment! ((See previous installments here: Classes, Raiders, - Castle Doomstone TTRPG Playset
Reeling from the psychic damage of 21st-century life, I’m going with the millennial option and continuing with my ongoing regression - HumbleDark: Humblewood x ShadowDark
The Humblewood campaign is done! We banished the Scorch, fought for the Humblefolk, and accumulated a little gang of cute, - Five Magic Rings
Today’s all about that most classic of fantasy treasures: the magic ring! Of course, the genre’s great flagship is literally - WatcherDM 2025 Round-Up
That’s a wrap on 2025, folks! Whether you’ve been through the year with us, or if you’re looking back on - The Perfect DnD Christmas Gift
What to get that special nerd in your life? Dice! The answer is Dice. They’ll use them all the time, - More Fallout Monsters for Troika!
Building on last week’s monsters, we’ve got even more baddies for our Fallout-inspired Troika hack! Combine this with the d36 - Fallout-Inspired Troika Monsters
Today we’re doing monsters, tuned for use with our Fallout-inspired Troika hack. Let’s get started! d36 Fallout Troika Monsters 11. - RPG Mounts
Spare me your horses! I want your craziest RPG mounts, and I want ’em now! My hope is you’ll add - One-Shot Adventure Recipe
A friend asked, so I must answer: what’s the secret recipe for a successful one-shot adventure? Of course, it’s more - Community Love and the Nanite Agenda!
Who knows the mind of a grey goo nanite swarm intelligence? MOTHERSHIP PCs with Sophontology and the readers of this - ProtoCON BC Report!
We’re fresh back from ProtoCON BC 2025 and ready to tell you all about it! Brought to us by masterminds - Blood Prairie: Doom of Derricksland
Our latest Blood Praire recap’s tragic finale is here: the Doom of Derricksland! Start at the beginning, or check here - Blood Prairie: Back to Derricksland
We return to the Blood Prairie for more adventures back in Derricksland! We’re picking up at Session #2! If you - Jurassic Dread
We’re taking a break from our most recent Blood Prairie recap to talk about tonight’s game: Jurassic Dread! Brought to - Blood Prairie: Derricksland
We’re back in the Blood Prairie! Our Wednesday night crew, TTRPG hustlers all, recently did me the honour of playtesting - Troika Adventure: Crashed in the Coin Tree
I’ve entered IRON DM 2025! First up, a Troika-adventure with too many exclamation points! For the uninitiated (i.e., me, a - Review: A3 is Bad, Actually
Gird yourselves, friends, because we’re trash-talking a forty-four-year-old module today: A3 AKA Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords! - Back to the Blood Prairie
We’ve wrapped another Blood Prairie Campaign! At this point, we’ve completed four full games of Blood Prairie, with one ongoing. - Humblewood
I got to play Humblewood last night! Gabriel ran it way back in the day (see his review), but this - The Devil in DnD
I’ve had devils on the brain, of late. There are many reasons for this. Greedy Devils: A Privatized Little Hell - World-Building Signposts
World-building is one of the most popular parts of DMing. It’s the bait on the hook; it’s what pulls us - Creepy Combats!
Combat can be heroic and exciting, dangerous and desperate, or (my favourite) CREEPY! There’s an old adage about Musical Theatre - TTRPG Map Design and the Trouble with Dreams
When I design a TTRPG map, I try to center one easy question: what are the choices? Now there’s a - Sumo Wrestler Class
As promised back in January, a Sumo Wrestler Class for LotFP and other old school games: the Rikishi! Our Sumo - Treefolk Tests and Trials
The Treefolk hide in the deep bush, sending forth tests to try the hearts of interlopers. Will you be found - RPG Pirates
Yar, we be coverin’ all yer RPG Pirate needs today, maties! Read on below! I love pirates! If you enjoyed - Twelve DM Tips
Here’s twenty-five years of running games, reading theory, and trial & error distilled into twelve DM Tips. Enjoy! If you’re - Troika and the TTRPG City
I’ve recently been toying with the idea of hexmapping Troika City. It’s not gone entirely smoothly. The Problem So the - NPC Gamblers and Gamers!
From the dance hall to the dungeon, PC adventurers and NPC gamblers often cross paths. Here’s a quick generator for - Campfire Closing Shots for TTRPGS
When TTRPG heroes gather around the campfire, what do they talk about? We’ve gotten a lot of great comments on - Blood Prairie Campaign Recap
We just finished a three-session Blood Prairie campaign and, holy shit, I am stoked for the next one. We’ve been - Stylite Generator
East of the city, sit seventy-two Stylites atop pillars of salt. Each is roughly ten minutes from their nearest neighbours, - Troika Depth Crawl: Goblin Maze!
A Troika depth crawl? Deeper! Last night’s Mothership game was a blast! Dave (Magnum Galaxy Games) ran us through his - Wanted: Spooky RPG Vampires!
I recently rewatched Nosferatu (2024), and hoo boy did Robert Eggers get Vampires right. Now, don’t get me wrong; all - Weird Dungeon Flora
Check out this Weird Dungeon Flora drawing by Evelyn Moreau! Gabriel’s a Patreon supporter; he tells me it comes with - Cursed Scroll #2 Campaign Recap
Our Cursed Scroll #2 Campaign comes to a close! Time for a recap! It was a wild ride. We defeated - Six Spells for Troika!
Today we’ve got Six Spells for Troika! It’s been quiet lately on the ol’ Troika subreddit. If you’re reading this, - Strange Shadowdark Monsters
What goes bump in the Shadowdark? The Strange! Birdcage Golem A humanoid woven from bronze bars, containing three colourful birds. - The Good Witch
Ride the storm, and drop a house on your former bestie; we’re talking about Good Witches! We’ve been playtesting Blood - Six Things I Hate About OSE
We’ve been using OSE (free here) to play A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity lately, to slake our curiosity about - Clever Brute
Are you reserving high intelligence for spell-casting monsters? Stop it! It’s time for a Clever Brute! While Gabriel and I - Mothership Micro-Reviews
Millennium Trail, our Generation Ship Supplement for MOTHERSHIP, is now available! So, naturally, I’ve got MOTHERSHIP on the brain. It’s - The Weird Parade
Dwarffolk come to drink and tradeOrcmen come to kill and invadeGoblins come in a Weird Parade Can’t be bought, can’t - Killing the Lord Ruler
Say you want a revolution. I’ve finally finished the Mistborn trilogy this week, so I’ve got overthrowing tyrants on my - Sizzling Scorpions
We’ve been playing our Cursed Scroll #2 Campaign again, and you know what that means: Giant Scorpions! Shadow 17, Narvey, - Dream Creatures
PocketQuest 2025 has launched, and Wakeside: What Dreams May Run is no longer just a dream; it’s reality! To celebrate, - Tips for Torches
The humble Torch is an adventurer’s first, best, and most interesting tool. Are you using it to its full potential? - Book Swaps and Magic Systems
I recently swapped Fantasy book recommendations with my cousin, and it’s got me thinking about magic systems. I suggested he - Paradise Prison of the Path of Mirrors
Shadowdark time! This week, we’ve been crawling through Cursed Scroll #2, and I’m all fired up about the Ras-Godai! With - Preview of Wakeside: What Dreams May RunThis week we’re releasing Wakeside: What Dreams May Run, a dream-themed PbtA-storygame for PocketQuest 2025! As you may know, we
- d6 Adventure Hooks
Need an adventure hook to get you writing your game for this weekend? We’ve got you covered for the next - Three Troika Monsters
A set of Troika!-compatible monsters to amuse, threaten, and delight your players. Ecthrosopher Littering a puzzle-piece beach, screaming without surcease - OSE Encounters: Fire Troll on a River Bridge
We’ve done System-Agnostic Trolls, now it’s time for an OSE-specific one. As our 5e meat-space campaign has drawn down, we’re - Underwater QuestCrawl: QuestDiving!
It’s past time for QuestCrawl to go underwater! DnD has long included support for sub-oceanic nonsense; now it’s our turn! - Here’s to the Gamemaster!
Here’s to the Gamemaster, whoever you may be! What It Takes It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do - Star Trek, for Troika
I want to play some Star Trek TTRPGs, and Troika‘s the system to do it with! So, last week we - Raiders!
Post-apocalyptic raiders are a cornerstone of the genre! If the highways aren’t crowded with hockey-mask-wearing barbarians, thirsty for blood and - Fallout, for Troika
Last week, I complained about how it would have been easier to play Fallout in Troika than to read the - Terminal City Tabletop Con: Why I BuyOver the course of the Terminal City Tabletop Con, I probably picked up, perused, and otherwise paged through a plethora
- Terminal City Tabletop Con Accomplished!
Terminal City Tabletop Con has come and gone, leaving us dazed but triumphant! We posted here about our plans last - Terminal City Tabletop Con Approaches!
Terminal City Tabletop Con is this weekend! The boys are back in con! Last year, we sat in on Proto-Alley - Outlaw Wizards of the Whispering Valley
In the wake of conquest, the Wizard Lords of the Whispering Valley have become outlaws! Driven from their estates by - WatcherDM Press Round-Up and Pirates
Check it out, WatcherDM is getting press! Yarr! Today we take a break from Shadowdark Monsters to be happy! Share - Shadowdark Monsters: Photophage
Shadowdark crawlers have one simple rule: don’t let the torch go out. So let’s break that rule. Accursed Photophage Crawlers - Tales from the Bar Hak: Fly-Headed Goblins
Bar Hak was built to be a West Marches game. If you’ve been playing OSR-coded DnD in the last decade, - The Trouble with Troika: Against Armour
We love Troika, but it’s not without its troubles. Chief among them? Armour! Fret not! WatcherDM is here with a - Magic Items for Troika
Troika doesn’t feature magic items the way other games do. It’s not too hot on material concerns as a whole; - Shadowdark Monster: the Unmourned
Need a new Shadowdark Monster? Want PC death to be more of a setback? Like to send characters off with - Here’s to the Blackmarsh Rangers!
If you want actionable TTRPG content, check out Tuesday’s post. Today is a campaign recap — for the love of - Five Swords for Shadowdark
We like Shadowdark. Playing it. Writing for it. Talking about it. Magic Swords, I’m less keen on. That’s partially a - Mad Moors: Now with weird plants!
Welcome to the Mad Moors! We’ve manuals full of fantasy fauna; where’s all the flora? Sure, there’s your Shambling Mounds, - Trolls of the Ermine Marches
What is a Troll? A type of giant? A rock-skinned mountain dweller? A bag of regenerating HP with pyrophobia? The Ermine - Torches
Yo! No big long post today (Tuesday’s is a hefty one). Instead, I wanted to share a little piece of - Let Them Eat Cake: Why PCs should get Rich
You know what Deng Xiaoping said: “It is glorious to be rich.” So why do we seem so invested in - Tales from the Bar Hak: Weird Elves
I like Elves. I hate them, too, but then, I’m a complicated guy. Inhuman, immortal weirdoes are right up my - D66 Provisions: a Table for Troika!
We do a little eating. In real life, in an effort to avoid starvation. In Troika (and some other TTRPGS), - A First Level Cleric VS History
How common are clerics? I suppose somewhere out there is a game of 5e, where every NPC has class levels, - Farce – a Houserule for Troika Initiative Chaos
While the rest of the TTRPG world debates side versus individual initiative, Troika’s system revels in a more unpredictable chaos.Delve Deeper…Farce – a Houserule for Troika Initiative Chaos
- Feuding with Feudalism
Let’s talk about Feudalism. “Feudalism never actually existed.” – You, probably Fair point. Making generalisations (as I’m about to) wins - Wrestlers and Rikishi
Three things are true: This makes me want to write up a Constitution-forward, space-control/tank class: a Wrestler! I’ve often seen - Mothership 1e : Honest Review
It finally came, the Mothership 1e Deluxe Set I have been waiting for since (checks Kickstarter) December 2021. With an - Pariah Play Report #1
I’ve been excited about Pariah for months. Gabriel gifted me a copy of the Psychedelic Proto-Neolithic Animist OSR RPG a
Weird Adventures for Adventurous Weirdos