Justin Howe's Blog, page 3
October 24, 2023
Atalante’s Portable Megadungeon
Here’s a write-up of the greatest magic item of all time: Atalante’s Portable Megadungeon.
Knights check in, but they don’t check out!
And yes, it’s based on the Knight Hotel from Orlando Furioso.
If you want all this in a PDF version, you can find one free here on my itch page.
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Atalante’s Portable Megadungeon is a large, roughly rectangular carved stone.
The Stone: The stone is portable, but heavy, as large as a thick tome. It is a bulky item. When placed on the gr...
October 9, 2023
The Castle
Two months ago I bought that sheet of pink foam. This week I finished making it into a castle.
I have very little experience terrain building. Bad shoebox buildings used in WH40K as a teen and some recent Frostgrave ruins. I do watch Wyloch, Black magic Craft, and others on Youtube. Even still, this was by far the biggest project I’d ever attempted.
Stuff learned from making the castle:
Procrastination is only a problem if it stops you or keeps you from starting/finishing, oth...August 27, 2023
What’s the Story With Your…?
Swords and horses…
Knights have them. Knights love them. Knights won’t stop talking about them. Don’t be left out when your knight friends bring up their swords and horses. Here are 20 bits of lore for your sword and horse.
And be sure to name them!
Your sword was…
Forged from meteoric steel.A gift from the Fey Realm.Forged from the dreams of a holy hermit.Forged in a burning lake of fire.Forged with a hatred for some creature.Once owned by a legendary anci...August 21, 2023
COMPULSORY GAMES by Robert Aickman
TL;DR: It’s good. If you like weird fiction and want to try Aickman, this is as good as any other place to start.
More details:
This collection brings together previously uncollected works, mostly left over from the Faber & Faber reprints from a few years back. As such they might not be the best stories with which to first encounter Aickman. But as a noted author of weird stories maybe there’s no best way to encounter his work except with some hope that you’re getting one of the good o...
August 20, 2023
Something Tookish
My buddy Gord published his Murder, She Wrote in the Shire TTRPG, Something Tookish, over at itch.io. I was lucky enough to get a chance to playtest this and it’s great fun. A real shenanigans generator! It’s the Brindlwood Bay/Under Hill, By Water mash-up you didn’t know you needed! (Also, I did some of the artwork.)
So, check it out!
July 31, 2023
HIGHPORT LOUNGE
I made another solo journaling game.
In Highport Lounge you play as a longhaul starship pilot on a space station waiting for your ship to be resupplied. You have nowhere to go and nothing to do but kill time. It will take two weeks for your ship to be resupplied. So find some paper, roll some dice, and discover what happens.
Beware of the void!
It’s free to download on the Yesterweird itch page.
Enjoy!
July 9, 2023
Slugknot House and Slime Gardens
Back again to share a link to my latest Into the Odd, Troika, Planescape, Electric Bastionland mess.
This time it’s off to Skugknot House a recently renovated mansion at the center of a neighborhood decaying before an onslaught of extradimensional slime. Marvel as the slug folk unwind and relax! Consult a slime mold with a PhD in Civil Engineering! Ride above the ooze in a bathysphere at the center of a gelatinous cube!
Enjoy! As always feel free to grab a community copy for any re...
June 1, 2023
The Endless Gallery
Hello,
Here’s an adventure locale depicting an infinite art gallery space. Explore a maze of exhibition spaces, ateliers, and neglected sculpture. Flee the terrors of parasitic art-shaped objects and attempt to understand the strange jargon of the alien curators.
Designed for Into the Odd, The Endless Gallery can be adapted to most surrealistic style adventure games like Troika or even D&D of the Planescape sort (at least as I would play it.).
Enjoy!
May 28, 2023
100 Dubious Philosophies & Esoteric Aesthetic Movements
This is a list of dubious philosophies and aesthetic movements partially inspired by the novel Odile by Raymond Queneau. A free PDF of this list can be found on my itch.io page. May it provide you with some amusement.
001 The Polysystematizers
002 The Phenomenophile Co-Materialists
003 The Dialetical Telepathicans
004 The Unreformed Piatiletkian Fellow Travelers
005 The Revisionist Anthroposophists
006 The Discordant Anthroposophists
007 The Plurivalent Dyshamonists
008 The Contraceptual Believ...
May 7, 2023
Cemetery of the Sepulchral Monolith
I’ve uploaded a new adventure to my itch page…
Somewhere near the edge of Bastion on the borders of Deep Country a monolith stands. A pockmarked slab of a strange mineral-like material, the monolith is in fact alive and it consumes ghosts to survive!
Cemetery of the Sepulchral Monolith is a brochure adventure for Chris McDowall’s Into the Odd, but can be used for similar games. In it you will encounter a monolith that generates ghosts in order to consume them, three factions, and a n...
