Pirate adventures and pirate codes

Piracy is as popular in RPGs as it is in the rest of mass-media - perhaps even more so.  A semi-criminal or outright criminal band primarily loyal to one another and devoted to acquiring wealth could describe a pirate crew about as well as it does a Gygaxian adventuring party.  The wealth-sharing agreements of most adventuring parties, where the principal figures (the Player Characters) receive a greater take than their subordinates has a parallel in the pirate's code as well.

A world that floats like a leaf

It's a strange thing that fantasy world-builders will happily allow for biology that defies reason, but when it comes to the shape of the world they stay shackled to the globe.  Suppose that there is a world that isn't a sphere.  Suppose that it has a different shape, but that the logic of that shape still gave its creatures a day to day experience that is easily imagined.  Where would imagining such a world take us?

Review: "The Black Ruins" by Corey Ryan Walden

The Black Ruins is a module by Corey Ryan Walden for low-level adventurers, released as a free e-book on Lulu with the option to buy a print copy.  Walden has aimed his system-agnostic scenario at the OSR, but claims that it "can be made compatible with newer editions with minimal effort".  After probing this sort of claim while writing my last review, I'm not inclined to believe that things are quite that simple.

Review: "An (un)Deathly storm" and "Infestation", two one-page adventures from Sacrosanct Games

An (un)Deathly storm and Infestation are both Pay What You Want modules published by Sacrosanct Games.  Sacrosanct, led by Rob Waibel, have been around for a good long time, established in 2002 and claiming that they've been kicking around game design for almost thirty years. The two modules are the first installations of a series of largely system-agnostic one-page fantasy adventures, and have been pitched at low-level characters.

That means I need to make a bit of a disclaimer before going on with the review.  I'm not here to determine the validity of the One Page Dungeon Contest.  (Though for what it's worth, I think the contest encourages scenario designers to test the limits of their creativity and brevity, qualities very useful in designing a scenario of any length.)  My purpose in reviewing is to consider how useful the product is to a DM for running a game.  To put that another way, I'm concerned that I'm doing the gaming equivalent of talking about how good wearable art is for hiking.