Justin Howe's Blog, page 2

Temple of the Rafter Wights

Check out my itch page for a new adventure, Towers of the Rafter Wights:

The Scour: a once fertile valley destroyed by the wrath of an angry god. The god’s anger was so great that even now, centuries after their ascension, their wrath remains. First, in a corrosive mist that blankets the floor of the valley. Second, in the rafter wights, the once worshiped eternal godbirds, now doomed to a cycle of death and resurrection for all eternity by their negligent creator.   

Once a century, ...

Black Spaghetti Hack Session 03: Goodfellows Mount

Last adventure, the party climbed up a hill. This adventure, the party climbed down a hill. In between, they had lunch.

The party reached the house at the top of the hill and after some boot-quaking, Ha’Des called out a “hello” and received a “come on in” by way of reply. So the party did, and walked right into the goodfellows playing cards before lunch.

An experiment:

To make the goodfellows (thuggish fae pixies) somewhat weird I had them be the characters from the Under Hill, By ...

Crypt of the Muscle Mummy: Touch the Void, You Turkeynecks!

Granted immortality in the long-distant Primeval Eons, the Muscle Mummies have returned from the depths of time. Now, by using state-of-the-art isolation technology, meditative void techniques, and body-numbing repetitive exercises, along with the traditional twin engines of guilt and shame, they offer to cultivate the void mind within anyone!

Including you!

Only by honing the body as well as the mind in the void’s furnace can anyone hope to achieve immortality. A hard task. But don’t ...

Black Spaghetti Hack Session 02: Riddle Me Wrong

Tavern map made with free assets from 2-Minute Tabletop

Last adventure, the party found a cup holding the key to a vast treasure. It just needed for them to solve a riddle. They failed so, this adventure started with the party waiting around a tavern for a guy named Gwardo Izznardo. They hoped he could solve the riddle that gave the location of the treasure.

While the party waited for Gwardo they gambled. For the Brancalonia fans, this was a round of poppycock. It’s a fine game to simulate...

Black Spaghetti Hack: Set-up & The Fool’s Cup Session 01

THE PITCH:
A spaghetti fantasy game that mixes For Love and Gold, They Call Me Trinity, and The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.

THE SETTING:
The Republic of San Uzzano, a small republic being fought over by two opposing armies (one army is loyal to the distant Emperor Joe, the other army is loyal to an exiled family called the Swansickles). The players are lazy ne’er-do-well mercenaries, nominally on Emperor Joe’s side, trying to avoid getting killed. They discover the location of a legendary fo...

THE LAUNDRY MECHANIC

So I added a laundry mechanic to my Brancalonia* game. It goes like this: every player has a 4-segment clock that tracks clean to filthy. When you’re clean, everything is fine. When you’re filthy, you have disadvantage on social skill checks. Long distance traveling, failing some actions, and combat make you dirty. Taking a bath, cleaning your clothes at a river makes you clean. Every settlement has a laundry/bath house where you can clean-up for a coin or two.

Why am I doing this?

...

THE WHISPERING HOUSE

Two day ago, Scrypthouse ZLX-1197 reported receiving a strange signal. Since then the house has gone silent. You’re to escort and protect the maintenance team sent to fix whatever went wrong. 

That shouldn’t be too hard.

Right?

A 16-page investigative adventure for Electric Bastionland and other weird adventure settings. Includes inspiration for making living houses and a list of lexical diseases to amuse and frustrate players.

Download it here.

(This is an updated version of ...

Favorite Reads 2023

A baker’s dozen of books I read and liked this past year. The last time I posted a list like this was in 2019.

The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck by Alexander Laing (1934)
A weird crime novel, and I mean both of those in their genre sense. It’s a murder mystery but for an audience that were teens who read Weird Tales. Strange things are a foot around a rural New England medical school. Odd experiments, diabolical research, and a despised professor harboring a dark secret. It’s good stuff with plen...

BLACK HACK BRANCALONIA

Our current Monster of the Week game will be ending this January (when more serious professorship resumes for the GM). This means I’ll likely be back in the GM’s seat sometime early next year. So I’ve been prepping a new campaign. This one will be a Brancalonia game except I don’t actually think Brancalonia is a good fit for 5E D&D.

In a game of down and out grubby adventurers nothing should have over 50HP. The brawling rules are neat, but maybe not necessary when characters are lower po...

Auzomatic Cafeteria Temples & Cookbook

Does your roleplaying campaign need a good diner?

Do you ever wish you had a bunch of tables to generate strange sounding meals?

The Auzomatic Order is a religious order that follows the example of Auzomat the Great Worm that burrows in the crawlspace beneath the world. The order builds cheap eateries wherever the ectoflesh from the crawlspace breaks forth into our reality.

In Auzomatic Cafeteria Temples you will discover the history of the order and the layout of one of their rest...