fragments of a blue ruin
Last time, our intrepid adventurers battled themselves in jelly-clone form, finally drained the water from the flooded lower level of the Water Baron's Aquifer machine, and were ambushed by some glider spiders in a tunnel. We left them standing at the bottom of the main shaft, faced with the newly revealed body of the Hydra… Continue reading VAARN ACTUAL PLAY: EPISODE 31
Hey folks, hope everyone's having a good holiday season. Vaarn is closed for the moment, but there are a couple of quick news items I wanted to post before the new year. Italian Translation Vaults of Vaarn #1 has been translated into Italian! This was an effort by some Italian OSR fans, Pedro Celeste and… Continue reading Holiday News Roundup
I find that it’s easy to overlook the lower end of the monster power curve. I completely understand why: you want your monsters to be memorable and cool and dangerous, so anything that gets its own blog post feels like it needs to be at least 4HD or above, have a load of weird powers,… Continue reading LOW-LEVEL MONSTERS
The Vaults of Vaarn are subterranean ruins that riddle the blue desert. Crucially, these Vaults will always contain Exotica, the far-future treasures the PCs are searching for; therefore, the GM is advised to create one such location before the campaign begins. Follow these steps to begin drafting a Vault. Roll a d20 to determine the… Continue reading CREATING A VAULT
An incursion from another fevered sphere of reality, a bizarre hypergeometric monster which feeds upon paradox and whose mere regard unwinds the weave and weft of space-time. The Fractalisk resembles a lizard from some angles, a blossoming flower from others, and at times can seem no more substantial than a fan of light reflected upon… Continue reading FRACTALISK
Elixirs are the province of the Vaarnish alchymist, a catch-all term for wondrous unguents, salves, tonics, nectars, and draughts, the recipes for which have been passed down through the eons. Infused with exotic molecules and enthusiastic nanomachinery, these single-use concoctions grant the drinker a variety of beneficial effects. They may be ingested by all PCs… Continue reading ELIXIRS
After a long gestation, my RPG zine about vampire thieves, Bloodheist, is out now in PDF! The full PDF costs $4.99 or you can download a free demo version that is basically all the rules and character creation content needed to play! Why are you still here? Go have a look! You can now buy… Continue reading Bloodheist Zine Released
As a follow-up to my last post on Toxin Dice, I thought it would be fun to showcase a few Vaarnish creatures that attack with or use toxins. Toxic attacks are indicated with the abbreviation TOX. If the affected character fails a CON save, they gain a Toxin Dice of the size indicated. So a… Continue reading TOXIC CREATURES
I very rarely make posts about game mechanics, but there's something I've started thinking about recently: poison! How does one make it engaging? I don't really like Save or Die type poisons and I haven't given any Vaarn monsters this ability. The closest is the Amaranthine Death-Worm, which can inflict you with a special status… Continue reading TOXIN DICE
Last time, the gang fought off a rustacean in the depths of the Water Baron's Aquifer machine, escaped the attentions of the Hydra's tentacles by taking refuge inside some broken cryogenic tubes, and descended deeper into the complex in search of the mechanism that would drain the water from the flooded lower levels. In their… Continue reading VAARN ACTUAL PLAY: EPISODES 29 & 30
VAULTS OF VAARN 