fragments of a blue ruin
The bestiary at present doesn't give many examples of what a Vaarnish psychic actually looks like. Here is an attempt to rectify that error. Assume all of these creatures to be telepathic and conversant in Noospeech, although you may not like what some have to say. Psy-Owl Biological / Psychic Level 1 / Armour 14… Continue reading PSYCHIC CREATURES
Ostriel’s secret police and intelligence service. Masters of espionage, sabotage, and assassination. Always alert for threats (real or imagined) against the Queen. The Krypteia have spies and informants embedded everywhere: Ostriel, Sargattea, the wider Wall, and throughout Vaarn. Many of these informants have no idea who they really serve. The organisation’s upper echelon is a… Continue reading FACTION: THE KRYPTEIA
We return for the last (for now) installment of Monsters in the Machine, a series where I riff back and forth with GPT-3 and create monsters for Vaarn based on the stat blocks the AI spits out. Our previous episode saw the AI plant the seeds for several new additions to the bestiary. Now I've… Continue reading MONSTERS IN THE MACHINE 10: THE FINAL CHAPTER
The second annual Vaarn Summer Jam ended on the 30th of August 2023, boasting 23 submissions from TTRPG creators on itch.io. The imagination and enthusiasm emanating from these entries has been really inspiring for me, and it has been exciting to read through them all. As with the last jam, I wanted to use some… Continue reading SUMMER JAM ’23: THE ENTRIES (Part 1)
Each PC may keep one pet. The equipment used to care for the pet takes up one item slot. The pet must consume one ration per day, although what this consists of is dependent upon the nature of the pet. Pets who are not fed for seven days will run away at the first chance… Continue reading PETS AND STEEDS
I'm going to run through the region creation process that forms the heart of Issue 04. We are going to be generating a region of Vaarn's Great Wall that will hopefully be ripe for adventuring. Without further ado, let's get started, and hope I can follow my own instructions. 1 Take a sheet of A4… Continue reading GENERATING THE WALL
As a quick reminder: the Vaarn Summer Jam now has just under four weeks left for submissions, more than enough time for you to create a masterpiece. We have so far seen seven submissions, including two new ancestries, a full Into the Odd conversion, and a bestiary zine. I exhort all blog-readers to get involved… Continue reading GAME JAM AND POSTER
I’m back for a surprise ninth installment of Monsters in the Machine. To re-read our previous entry click here, or you can go back to the start and see how it all began. To quickly re-cap what’s going on, this is a series where I feed the GPT-3 AI entries from the Vaults of Vaarn bestiary and let it come up… Continue reading MONSTERS IN THE MACHINE 9
I run a bi-monthly feature on the Vaarn Patreon called Monster Monday, where patrons get the chance to vote on spark words, which I then use as inspiration for new Vaarn monsters. A recent vote resulted in a tie between the spark words 'echopraxia' and 'pareidolia'. These mean 'an involuntary imitation or repetition of someone… Continue reading MIMICS
Pariahs of Vaarn is a full-colour bestiary zine, consisting of some of the longer creature entries I've been writing for the Patreon over the last few years. They don't fit very well with the shorter bestiary entries I use in the main zine series, so I've decided to give them their own occasional release. I really enjoy… Continue reading PARIAHS OF VAARN #1 RELEASE
VAULTS OF VAARN 