It’s the first session of 2025. We had four players at the table, a rare treat these days. They decided to finally try and get rid of a major threat looming over their home base ever since the start of the campaign. The results were… less than spectacular. We had lots of fun with this.
In which the party attempts to subvert a boogieman camp through magical infiltration. Ploikal, cloaked in invisibility, tries and fails to psychically manipulate the chief Movog, while outside the camp, the spirit of fallen comrade Cista speaks through Xull’s possessed claw, demanding vengeance. After several failed schemes involving mind-controlled brutes and sleep spells, the party retreats empty-handed.
An addendum of sorts to the year-in-review post. Here’s a quick rundown of the most notable content and rules I homebrewed in 2024 for my ongoing sword & planet classic D&D campaign, Planet Karus. My players may not want to read further for fear of spoilers. I mostly post this as a reminder to myself. It’s nice to be reminded of all the small and large things that get created as we go.
Gaming Content
Adventuring sites, monsters, and items created for the Planet Karus campaign.
The Abyssal Sanctum: A small dungeon comprising 22 rooms across three levels. A natural cave system that serpent men once used for study and worship, now infested by a slime god outer being. The entrance to this dungeon is hidden inside the farmers’ guild hall in the players’ hometown. Players have yet to explore this one.
Plasma Elemental, Harmonic Convergence Chamber: A custom elemental that roams the third level of The Balok, our campaign’s tentpole dungeon, made up of the same stuff as the massive power source that is located at the center of this level.
The convergence chambers are the mechanisms by which these elementals were brought into this world by the Balok’s builders. These are now malfunctioning, allowing the elementals to roam free. Players have yet to encounter these.
Regeneration Machine, Space Crab Cloak, Possessed Visitor Claw: Various magic items that I created in response to players’ actions.
The machine is a thing they plan to build from parts found in the main dungeon. It does what it says on the tin.
The cloak was commissioned from the town tanner, using shells from a defeated giant space crab.
The claw is… a long story. It was originally attached to the zombified remains of a space alien, who was destroyed by the players, the claw taken as a trophy. Then, in session 24, they managed to complete a ritual that transplanted the soul of a deceased retainer that one player character was carrying around in their cranium to the claw and attach it to the arm of another player character. I modeled it after an OD&D-style intelligent sword. Can’t wait to see them try it in action.
Ruined Serpent Man Citadel: Work in progress. This is intended to become a new small, highly lethal dungeon inside the ruined remains of what once was a serpent man citadel, now buried beneath desert sands. I am going to try and use Finch’s method for creating dungeon maps for this one for the first time.
Rules & Procedures
Expansions, adjustments, and additions for Hackbut, my homebrew classic D&D ruleset.
Hex-Crawl Tools: Procedures for generating lairs on a wilderness hex map, a similar one for generating settlements, and for determining the number of monsters and amount of treasure in ruins.
Movement Rules Tinkering: Adjusted encumbrance levels for armor, adjusted movement rates for mounts, triangulating between Delving Deeper, OED, and other sources.
Rationalized Jellies, Puddings, Slimes, Oozes, and Molds: Streamlined rules for the various gooey entities one finds in a typical OD&D dungeon, in particular for handling their grab, hold, and dissolve attacks.
Misc Refereeing Tools: Rolls for equipment costs, inspired by The Black Hack, but usable with classic D&D rules. Six difficulty level descriptors that can be used with the cleric’s turn undead table, converting it into a general task resolution system.
Mighty Deeds of Arms: Rules for fighters’ stunts and combat maneuvers, adapted from Dungeon Crawl Classics but adjusted for a classic D&D sensibility. (Posted here.)
Expanded Colored Races of Man Table: Inspired by Skerples’ table of races for his glog rules, this takes Carcosa’s colored races of man and adds a description for each, inspired by new age parapsychological color theory, a stat reroll, and a bonus and a weakness. (Posted here.)
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Those are the highlights. If anything piques your interest, do comment, and I might post more details in the future.
Welcome to the fifth annual review on this blog. (Previous annual reviews: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.)
This felt like a year where we settled into a mode of hobby gaming that can be maintained indefinitely. Barring exogenous shocks, of course. I also managed to complete my PhD, which has taken the pressure off things a little bit but did not lead to as much slack to really expand my hobby activity on this site as I had hoped. There is always more work to do.
As has become customary, here’s a review of what we played, some statistics, games, and game-related paraphernalia I acquired, D&D-related fiction I read, and, finally, some resolutions for the new year. Happy 2025, everyone.
I described Planet Karus, our current D&D campaign, at some length in last year’s review. The game is still going from strength to strength, and I continue to expand the map with new adventuring sites. We also have the occasional almost fully improvised session of shenanigans. Running a fully homebrewed game continues to be an incredibly freeing experience, if at times slightly daunting. I look forward to many more sessions in the years to come.
Galaxy Trucker is a quick game, which explains the high count. We typically manage to play two rounds in a night. I am happy we managed to give Sidereal Confluence a go. It’s a beast of a game but also quite the experience. I wouldn’t mind giving it another go at a future occasion, if we all feel up to it. Lunch Money we played on a lark for nostalgia’s sake. That game is so incredibly nineties it hurts. Cyclades is a new acquisition. I would say it is on par with the other Matagot dudes-on-a-map games we like. It is most similar to Kemet, and I think out of the two, I prefer Cyclades because it is less sprawling and more tightly wound.
A game of Cyclades in progress.
Tabletop Role-Playing Game Play Statistics
I once again crunched the numbers on our RPG sessions. Read on for the dirty details.
Sessions
We played nine sessions of Planet Karus, one of which was an eight-hour marathon session. We’ve made the transition to only playing in person with success. I don’t feel it has affected overall attendance too much. If it has, I would say it’s an acceptable trade-off against a much more convivial and engaging play experience.
Attendance
The number of players ranged from 2 to 6 (M = 2.9, SD = 1.3). The six-player marathon session skews these numbers somewhat. If we take that one out, we get a range of 2 to 3 (M = 2.4, SD = 0.5). Almost exactly the same as last year.
The top player was good for 29.6% of the attendance, the number two for 18,5%, and the two shared number three players for 14,8% each. It looks like we had a slightly broader base of participation this year, which is nice and healthy, I would say.
Chart of player attendance.
Character Deaths
We had a total of two player-character deaths and eleven retainer deaths over those nine sessions. Total deaths ranged from 0 to 4 (M = 1.6, SD = 1.2). Both those PC deaths occurred in session 21, which happened on my birthday, and the same player lost both characters. They really do know how to please their referee.
The MilliWhack rating for this year’s sessions ranged from 73 to 103 (M = 89, SD = 9). That’s a decline compared to last year, which I feel reflects the players’ increased savviness and stronger characters. I guess I need to up the ante and start introducing some deadlier environments.
Chart of MilliWhack rating of the Planet Karus campaign to date.
Experience Points
XP per session ranged from 0 to 13,200 (M = 5,710, SD = 4,703). The most lucrative sessions were #23 (13,200) and #26 (11,273). Both were hauls acquired from the second level of the tentpole dungeon, with levels of danger to match the sizeable rewards. I won’t share spoilers here about if there is much more to acquire on this level, but players might need to start exploring the third level if they want to push more of their characters into the upper-level range.
Seven of the current characters saw action this year. Their levels range from 1 to 6 (M = 3.0, SD = 1.5). These characters have now acquired between them 69,994 XP. (Do note that players can get XP from burning treasure, so in effect, each piece of mundane treasure they acquire has the potential of netting them XP twice.) That’s a 3× increase compared to last year. Very well done. Our most active player has managed to get their magic-user character to level six, which is the highest level attainable in Hackbut. A notable achievement!
Game Acquisitions
I believe I did not buy as much hobby-related stuff this year as I did previously. My wallet thanks me.
Yoon-Suin was a backer reward (I think?) NAP I got to read a few of the winning entries for models to emulate (chiefly Melonath Falls and Caught in the Web of Past and Present). Haven’t gotten around to that yet. Fight On recently relaunched. I had a browse, and it looks fun.
CoraQuest was a birthday present, and it ended up being a big hit with my two six-year-old boys. It’s an extremely well-done, kid-friendly dungeon crawler. Captain Sonar was a gift from my player group, which has yet to find its way onto my table. Dragon Quest was also a gift from a longtime friend and occasional player. A great collectible I am not sure I will ever play, but I am very pleased to own. Cyclades I acquired myself to sort of complete my Matagot dudes-on-a-map holy trinity (alongside Kemet and Inis). We’ve played this a few times, and gosh, is it fun.
Kit: Some more Gamescience dice (d4, d6, d10, d100, d12). I am still on the hunt for a nice d8 and d20. After the previous year’s splurge on some kit for in-person games, I am pretty much set, though, and I don’t feel I need much more.
The final one, CAS’s Hyperborea, is an absolute must for any old-school D&D head, of course, but the single volume I’d recommend the most is Bebergal’s delightful anthology. It’s a near-perfect collection of sword and sorcery, the kind I’d like all of my players to read. I like it so much that I acquired the second, expanded edition in hardback later in the year.
Peter Bebergal’s Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons (revised and expanded edition).
Blogging
Ah, blogging. The thing I enjoy doing but can’t seem to make the time for. In the hierarchy of hobby-related things, it does come last. I mean, if the choice is between doing some prep on the Planet Karus campaign or drafting a post, the former takes precedence. And that’s fine, I guess.
I did start cross-posting session reports here, which is better than nothing. But what I’d really like to do is wrap up that series of posts on things I learned about running Castle Xyntillan, continue the series on my homebrew rules, and also start posting some things I have created for the Planet Karus campaign. Now, to make the time for it. Ah well.
Views
The blog had 3,720 views and 1,257 visitors. Surprisingly, that’s an increase from last year of 341 (10%) and 309 (33%), respectively.
We had 498 views through search engines, 93 through Beyond Fomalhaut, and 85 through Reddit. Melan beat Reddit. Amazing. (I don’t really post to Reddit anymore. Maybe that’s part of it.) I also continue to receive traffic through The Byzantine (21), Anne (17), and Xaosseed (10). My thanks, as always.
Looking Back and Ahead
Let’s conclude this post by reflecting on last year’s resolutions and making some new ones for the year ahead.
Last Year’s Resolutions
The goals for 2024 included restarting the Planet Karus campaign on a monthly basis, continuing monthly board game nights, running an in-person marathon session, and maintaining a monthly blog schedule.
We played nine Planet Karus sessions which isn’t exactly monthly, but close enough if we factor in the usual breaks over summer and Christmas. If we manage to maintain this level of play over the coming year, I would be perfectly satisfied. But maybe we can bump that number up by one or two.
It also looks like we managed to have nine board game nights. Similarly, I hope we can keep that up and maybe squeeze in one or two more.
The big achievement in 2024, gaming-wise, was, without a doubt, the in-person marathon session we had on March 2. It was an absolute blast to play for eight hours straight. I can’t remember the last time we did that. It may have been back in high school decades ago. We had so much fun that we have set a date for a new marathon session in the new year.
The only goal I feel like I did not achieve was the monthly blog schedule. Aside from the play reports, I only posted three things, two of which were AI-generated lists. For a variety of reasons already discussed, a monthly schedule is just asking too much. But more than three should be doable. I mean, that’s one post every 17 weeks. So, let’s cut the original goal in half and shoot for a proper blog post every other month, for a grand total of six this year.
Upcoming Year
In closing, here are some resolutions for the new year.
Continue the monthly in-person Planet Karus games, as well as the monthly board game nights. Obviously. See if we can increase the attendance and the frequency, if only slightly. Run another in-person marathon session of Planet Karus. And yes, see if we can have a modest increase in the number of blog posts.
A final session before the end of the year. I had had zero time to prep this one, so while my players were getting set up, I ran through a slimmed-down version of my usual prep script, and off we went. A straightforward dungeon crawl, to go easy on the poor, overworked referee, turned into quite the gauntlet due to a higher-than-average amount of monsters rolled during dungeon restocking.
In which the party navigates The Balok, making allies of rats and foes of various beasts, loses four retainers to misfortune and monsters but returns with an ornate shield and other treasures, only for Ploikal to discover disturbing changes at the farmers’ guild hall.
We had an occasional player request an additional session because they were in the neighborhood. I was only too happy to oblige. This was a fairly straightforward bit of dungeon delving, a nice palate cleanser after all the high-stakes urban shenanigans of the previous week. Here’s the usual AI-generated capsule summary.
In which our adventurers explore The Balok, suffering repeated attacks on Pholgon’s unfortunate armor from both green slime and grey ooze, engage in snack-based diplomacy with cavemen until it goes badly wrong, lose two light foot to the ensuing melee, but ultimately escape with a healthy haul of coins, tools, and a potion of giant’s strength.
We sat down to play again last Friday and had an almost entirely improvised session roaming the wilderness, and in a nearby city. Sparked in large part by a few carelessly tossed-out rumors. In other words, the best kind. Here’s the usual brief summary and a link to the full report.
In which our adventurers journey to Khodang, acquire exotic pets, capture boogiemen for sacrifice, perform a bloody ritual to enchant an alien artifact, and surgically attach said artifact to Xull’s arm – all while losing two companions to the perils of the wasteland.
After a 17-week hiatus, we finally sat down for another session the other week. And what do you know? On the very first encounter roll of the night, I nearly TPK’d the party with a random wilderness encounter. Twelve titanotheres and a failed surprise check will do that to you. One player, who runs a powerful psionic magic-user, made their save vs. death after hitting zero hitpoints by one point exactly. Close call! The rest of the session was fun as well. Below is the usual capsule summary.
In which our adventurers brave the perilous Mirror Hills, suffer a tragic encounter with titanotheres, regroup to explore the mysterious Balok, and delve into its dangerous depths, facing shadows, centipedes, and sleeping pigs while uncovering valuable treasures and magical artifacts, only to emerge victorious but not unscathed from their subterranean exploits.
At long last, another proper blog post. I am picking up the series on my homebrew classic D&D rules. We were getting into the rules of play. Last time, we discussed experience and progress. For this post, we will look at time and movement.
Time
I handle time reasonably straightforwardly. I define a Dungeon Exploration Turn as lasting ten minutes. A Combat Round, I set at ten seconds. The latter is perhaps a bit controversial. I follow Delta’s reasoning, which has served me fine.
What about time in the wilderness? When I wrote the version of Hackbut that we currently use, we played Castle Xyntillan, which does not include wilderness exploration. In our current campaign, Planet Karus, we do hex crawl. There, a turn takes up a full day, which, if needed, can be divided into two sets of three watches. (A full write-up of the wilderness rules we use in Planet Karus can be found here.)
A final unit of time that does get mentioned in Hackbut is downtime. Again, my use of this has shifted with the campaigns. In Castle Xyntillan, a downtime turn is always a week. In Planet Karus, we now use 1:1 timekeeping, so downtime lasts however much real-world time has passed.
Movement
Moving on to movement (sorry), the first thing to tackle is scale. The standard scale in the dungeon is 1 inch = 5 feet. Movement rates are expressed in inches. Dungeon maps use 10-foot squares. (In the wilderness, we use hex maps with a standard scale of 6 miles.)
In combat, you can move five times your movement rate in feet per round.
While exploring, careful movement, mapping, and checking for traps are assumed. You can move 100/3 times your movement rate (sic) during a turn.
Normal movement through cleared areas is at five times your exploration rate. Running is at ten times your regular movement rate.
Yes, these exploration rates are generous and prevent the need to count squares. But they are more realistic (again, see Delta’s many posts on the subject), which makes in-game outcomes more predictable. It also has the nice side-effect that in-game and out-of-game time elapsed while in the dungeon are more or less the same (if the referee keeps track of exploration turns, as they should.)
A side note on movement in the wilderness: as in OD&D, double your movement rate in miles per day. But we do something different, inspired by this lecture by Settembrini and taken from Outdoor Survival: we use movement points, which are spent when entering a hex. The movement rate is converted into one point for every three inches of movement you have. Each terrain type has a movement cost. This works very, very well. I highly recommend it.
A final thing included in the rules is a box on zones and ranges for theater-of-the-mind-style play. This is a hold-over from our days playing The Black Hack. We don’t really ever use abstractions like this anymore, but we do play theater of the mind a lot. If everyone at the table is generous and reasonable, issues related to movement, time, and distance rarely, if ever, become a point of contention. In the grand scheme of things, they seldom matter that much. Only in high-stakes situations does it pay to be precise. Those are the moments when you won’t want to use abstractions anyway.
That’s it for time and movement. Next up, saving throws!
We managed to sit down for a game of D&D just before the end of the month. Notably, the players have breached the third level of the campaign’s tentpole dungeon. They also ‘burned’ a tremendous amount of treasure to level up their characters.
In which a group of adventurers, led by Ploikal, the swift-footed mage, and his daring comrades embark on a treasure-seeking journey into the depths of the eerie Balok dungeon. They encounter giant rats and hostile albino neanderthals, manage to gather a modest haul of gems and silver pieces, and face a terrifying horde of zombies. Tragically, one of their own falls in the undead melee. Despite this loss, they return safely, their spirits lifted by the successful acquisition of treasures, which they celebrate with a legendary bender.
A short but sweet session on my birthday, in which I got to kill two characters, both run by the same player. My players really really know me so well.
In which adventurers Kaplull, Gita, Xull, and Gorakal set out to explore The Balok, encounter a robot named Sterling, and face fierce bonecrushers. Tragically, Kaplull and Gita fall in battle. Amidst their losses, the group secures enchanted boots and a valuable figurine, returning home with tales of bravery and sorrow.
