A small coastal region north of the Empire and south of the Kingdom of Ice Elves, Astoria has stood unclaimed for over a century. Today, with unrest to the south, Daniel Astor offers aid to any who will help him reclaim his homeland.
Astoria is a free RPG resource, consisting of a hexcrawl of the region, as well as a multilevel megadungeon; the Astorian Keep.
Recent Blog Posts
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Rules Revision (August 2020 Edition)
We’ve played a handful of sessions with the rules as I wrote them originally, an almost word-for-word copy of Skerples' "Many Rats on Sticks". After having played for a bit, I’ve identified some things I don’t like, and so I’m going to fix them.
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On Gods and Patrons
I’ve always been a fan of the Devotion-powered deities. Gods that only exist so long as there are those that believe in them, and as a corollary, are only as powerful as their base. Gods with few believers are weak, and those with more believers are stronger. Gods who have no followers die. This leads to an interesting question for Astoria.
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Adventure Report: Riverwatch
Over month ago I disbanded the last of my gaming groups due to COVID. It hurt to do, but I was no longer enthusiastic about the campaign, and I was struggling to be a good DM. I spent the next day moping.
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Let's Talk Pages
In the last few days, there’s been a confluence of uncertainty around the OSR’s blogging platform. Elfmaids & Octopi suffered a major dataloss, and /u/theHopelessGamer on reddit asked about alternative blog platforms. I’m taking today to talk about my platform of choice, and the power it provides.
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Glog Classes!
I’m not done with all of them yet, but classes are coming along nicely. Here’s some notes on each of them.
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The Machine
It’s pretty common knowledge that my primary occupation is software engineer. This means I occasionally dream of the lost days of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, and their mathematical machines. While I was working on the Riverwatch dungeon (more on that next week,) I had the idea that the head cultist was building divinely inspired machines of the same nature. The knowledge of Aeto-Krah, plus a compulsion to create intricate items and improving manual dexterity results in something that lies between the Marble Machine X and an analog computer.
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Rules Are Up!
So last week on the hack blog, I put out a minimal OSR ruleset. In the "Things I stole" section, I mentioned that I had never read the GLOG. Welp, turns out GLOG is what I wanted in the first place.
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Welcome to Astoria
Astoria is my quarantine project brought to life. At first I thought I was simply a "Forever DM," cursed to always play with groups of newer players, never to take up the sword myself. This last few months has taught me something else entirely. I’m not a DM by coincidence, I’m a DM because I couldn’t be anything else. My spirit craves a world to shape, players to experience that world, and most importantly an community to share that world with.
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