It’s the JPG you see twice in the page! You get the full preview! WOW! This game is good!

At $50, that’s only $3.33 per Russel! That’s a BARGAIN!

Review from Questing Beast

Howdy. Only if they have a specific greater doom to allow it. There’s an explanation of that on page 123 where greater dooms are introduced, and an example of that for monsters like dragons (p. 261)

This dungeon is great. Adheres to some great essential dungeon principles, nice map, good layout. This is a great plug-in dungeon you can put anywhere in your megadungeon.

From just glancing at this module, I could tell that a lot of work was put into the art, writing, and layout. I could also tell that it had a totally unique premise. I had to sit down with my reading glasses and squint to grok what was going on here.

My efforts were well rewarded. This is a totally unique idea for an adventure, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.

In the City, there’s a bar (the titular Four Humors Bar). Its proprietor makes magical liquor out of distilled spirits (like, SPIRITS, not alcohol). Beneath the bar, these spirits are running amok.

The players’ goal is to retrieve all the liquor worms from the different spiritual factions underneath the bar. This can be done totally through solving the “social puzzle” of the relationships between the factions. A super neat idea that replaces the normal “water beats fire” elemental puzzles in dungeons.

If they can get all five, they can even take over running the bar. How cool is that?

Combined with a great map, this module really is something special.

An interesting supplement, that brings the idea of card oracles (reminiscent of classic tarot cartomancy) into play. Each card has a different oracular meaning if upright or upside down. If you were disappointed that the core supplement of His Majesty the Worm had less cartomancy than you were expecting, this supplement is for you.

The twist is each of the cards are totally unique, new cards–with GORGEOUS art. Really compelled by the art.

At last! You can play through Barkeep on the Borderlands with His Majesty the Worm! We have achieved the acme of RPG civilization.

A solid, well-built dungeon. It is grounded in the actual spaces a monastery might have (cantor’s tower, scriptorium, sacristy), and then expanded with wonderful details (a chamberlain that’s just a head and torso, beetle knights, a halfling merchant called Pinwheel). The perfect blend of whimsy and wonder and realism.

Not at all, come on in!

A set of procedures for overland travel built out from the small optional rules section in the book.

I can imagine a lot of folks will need rules like this to handle a set up outside of the core conceit of “big city, underworld underneath it,” so this is a huge service to the community.

Perhaps! To make a Worm Jam entry, I had to cut a lot of content I had planned. The shrine was initially just one room in a larger dungeon. I bet these ideas will eventually be refined and sold as a larger product.

Do you know the bright Infection from Hollow Knight? Do you want to give it to your players in His Majesty the Worm? This module lets you accomplish that wish!

A fishing mini-game improves every game. This one is a fun one that uses tarot cards. Pull it into your His Majesty the Worm game, or use it as a fun tarot minigame with any game of your choice.

The module is called “Psychic Divorce Frog.” There’s a monster called a Broodmother that can generate an “Aura of Divorce.” There’s also a monster called “Bloodstealer.” What more do you need to know to pick up this game?

In actuality, this is a cool introduction to a setting where life outside the dome is post-apocalyptic, with a cool dungeon to explore. The layout is great and very usable. Very worth checking out.

A fantastic drop-in-dungeon for His Majesty the Worm, featuring a devilish count holding an eternal party inside a time bubble in the Underworld. The information design is top notch, love the way the rooms are laid out and interactable features are detailed.

Also, the satyr is a fantastic new monster, stealing this for my games for sure.

This module not only has a new kith, but a new, open-ended approach to learning talents. The additional talents are clever and would be a welcome homebrew in any His Majesty the Worm game.

This dungeon is a great example of how you can take the components offered by the core book of His Majesty the Worm (some idea seeds, some Dyson Logos maps, some monsters), and combine them to have a dungeon level.

The art is incredibly charming.

This is one of the best dungeons I’ve read in 2024. It is jam packed with cool ideas–weird, memorable, gettable–perfectly executed. The art and layout are top notch. I would love to buy a physical copy of this dungeon at some point.

This supplement introduces three new schools of magic, and each are incredibly tightly written and well balanced with the rest of the game. The idea of prestige paths for adventurers is also a really good idea for a game where questing and exploration changes your character. I’d endorse this wholeheartedly as house rules for any His Majesty the Worm game.

A handful of new kiths and kins with lots of versatility. Great flavor, really strong writing voice.

Go nuts

This is cool, I like the tactile feeling of how the cards are dispensed.

A drop-in dungeon level, with an associated bounty, for your mythic Underworld. The time trap hook (detailed in the description) adds an interesting scenario for play groups who enjoy solving story-based puzzles. Well laid out and smartly written.

“The moon above holds a great treasure: the key to heart’s desire. Problem: the moon’s way up high. Solution: everyone here knows that when true love finds the thrones, the moon will descend once more. Problem #2: the thrones are currently occupied by two of the world’s biggest haters.”

This level of writing is consistent throughout the dungeon. A whimsy reminiscent of Fallen London, with solid dungeon-design principles underlying everything. Solid recommend to put this level in your His Majesty the Worm Underworld.

In 2023, like many people, I participated in Dungeon 23. The end result was two dungeons - one based on the tarot (for His Majesty the Worm) and one rambling cozy depthcrawl (for Under Hill, By Water). For the past several weeks, I have been revising and refining the tarot dungeon. It is called The Castle Automatic.*

Getting the dungeon into a shape to be published is a different kind of challenge than the creative challenge of writing down ideas. Here are three techniques I am using to structure the information architecture.

The Universal Caveat and Apotropaic to Ward the Nerd

All of His Majesty the Worm is writing down stuff that works for me. It’s really a game that tells you how I write my own notes and run my own games. So, that’s just to say there are lots of ways to key entries, do layout, and architect information, but this stuff works for me. I hope it works for you too.

Room names and numbers

His Majesty the Worm asks GMs to give players a simple copy of the dungeon map, with any secret doors or hidden passages removed and each room numbered simply. Using this method, the ambiguities that exist in verbal descriptions of a space (no, no, the two exits on the north wall are spaced further apart) that wouldn’t exist if the players were actually looking at the space in the world, are removed. The simple numbering system (room 101, room 102, room 103) doesn’t spoil the fun of exploring the contents of the room, and lets players and GMs communicate with each other easily about which room they’re talking about.

However, the GM is rarely thinking of rooms like “room 101, room 102, “ they’re thinking of “The Grand Ballroom” and “The Under-scullery.” And, as the players are exploring, they’re writing these things into the margins of their map!

To try and make each room reference as useful as possible, I’m taking the extra step of including three pieces of information each time: the room number on the map (room 101), a descriptive room name (the Grand Ballroom), and the page reference (p. 14). Overkill? Maybe. But I’d rather give you too much information rather than by leaving you feeling lost in the text itself.

OSE style + landmark, hidden secret

The OSE “house style bullet points” has emerged as something of a “standard” in OSR productions over the last few years. This house style describes each room with certain elements in bold. The bolded text is elaborated on in bullet points following; each bullet point is concise, often just a phrase or short sentence. I like this format because it aims for clarity and quick reference during gameplay.

In my implementation of bullet points, I found it necessary to add in some specific rules to my style guide.

First, room descriptions are nested into levels of landmark/hidden/secret.

The basic room description is landmark. Everything a careful adventurer can see at a glance is described. It is set in normal paragraph text with interactable stuff set in bold.

• Hidden information is set at bullet point 1. This includes any interactable stuff from the basic description. If players need to take an action to see this content, even if it’s just “I look at the gargoyle statue,” it is listed at this level.
  • Secret information is set at bullet point 2. This is for content that is usually discovered by “fucking around” with the content at bullet point 1.

Second, the bullet points follow the same order as they were listed in the description of the room. If the description of the room details a rug and an unlit chandelier, the bullet points will list the contents of the rug in the first bullet point and the unlit chandelier in the second bullet point.

Enemies described last in prose, first in bullet points

This post by the Alexandrian made its way into my head at some point. It asks: What we’re broadly looking at is whether it’s better to describe the monsters in a room FIRST or LAST.

I think it’s better to describe the monsters LAST. I can’t remember if this is what Justin Alexander said, and can’t be bothered to re-read the post!

I like this method because I want the players to have all the information they need to make informed decisions, but if I start saying “The goblins…”, the players start saying “I want to attack the goblin,” and SHUT UP. Let me first say there’s a bookshelf and a tabaxi rug and then I can say “Also a goblin,” and then you get to go STEVE.

I’ve applied this principle by describing the monsters that usually live in the room last in my prose description of the room. However, contrary to my bullet point rule (above), I put any relevant monster details into the first bullet point. As a GM, you’ll probably want to reference this detail first. However, if you choose to use the prose description as read aloud text, you don’t want to spoil the surprise of the goblin because SHUT UP STEVE, OH MY GOD.

* Cheers to Mr. Arnold K for the name suggestion.

The Worm Jam has crossed the halfway point (and then some)! Even now, before the desperate last sprint towards the finish line, we have some incredible entries. I’m thrilled with the initiative and creativity of the community so far.

At this point in this creative endeavor, I’m needing to make some choices about what I’m going to focus on. My brainstorming gave me more ideas than I could complete in the time allotted. And, as always, I have overestimated how much time I have and how quickly I can create good content.

Playing to my strengths

I have at least some awareness of things I care about, things I don’t, things I’m good at, things I’m not. I know that I can do some things myself, like writing. I can probably do a passable job setting the text into the Adherent of the Worm Creator’s Kit. I know that I can’t do other things. I can’t draw or do cartography. I can’t see my own copy errors.

I’ll need support for everything I can’t do. There’s a few strategies I might use here.

For one, I can collaborate with someone else. If someone helps me out with something I need, I can do the same for them.

Two, I can reach out to help from the community. The Worm Discord channel is cooking stuff up right now. I also am lucky enough to have found other like-minded game designers, OSR enthusiasts, and general perverts that are willing to help groupthink in-progress projects.

Matters of scale

I also know that I can’t do everything that I want to do, even if I have the right skill sets and levels of support. Like Quests, each project needs to be discrete and achievable.

Taking a look at the document where I have my module drafted, there are parts that are more fleshed out than others. Some ideas were ambitious. Some were interesting. Some are mostly done. Some are just sketched out. What do I need to cut to get this down to a finishable state?

If I cut content, I make sure to save it somewhere. You never know when you can create something new and interesting by Frankensteining two old drafts together.

For now, I’m going to cut back on the dungeon I had planned and focus on one unique idea: a Dark-Souls-esque shrine full of merchant NPCs.

In summation: Put your energy most towards the things on the quadrant of x: care about and y: able to do yourself.

Both Mortiis and I used the public domain art of a frontispiece by John Bauer. In my case, this art was created for print by Pete Borlace.

I have been traveling this past weekend, so have been away from my computer. I find it very hard to actually produce content on my laptop (forget about a phone), so I’m a little behind on my attempts to blog inspirational material for the Worm Jam.

So! We will rely on the voice of someone else whose work I respect: Ben L of Mazirian’s Garden/Through Ultan’s Door. Here is a post about how he creates his zine. I think this is a great breakdown of the actual steps that one goes through to create a piece of content that jumps from your head to the page to somebody else’s gaming table.

These are so evocative! A wonderfully handy random table to have on hand!

These are so evocative! A wonderfully handy random table to have on hand!

Awesome! Are you on Discord? What’s your handle? I’ll DM it to you.

And when you have your dungeon in a reviewable state, I’ll be happy to provide both editing and copyediting for you.

I love seeing everybody cooking up new kiths, kins, talents, and other player-facing rules for His Majesty the Worm during the Worm Jam.

I wanted to offer a few guiding principles for how I think about writing player character abilities in OSRy games.

Talents should be active

Abilities that give you +1 to a stat or favor to some task aren’t very interesting. When you look down at your sheet, see the number recorded there, and apply it to your test–it’s just an amalgamation of numbers interacting with each other, not a cool representation of how your character’s abilities are impacting the world. I’ve written about this before in my post Making +1 Swords Feel Magical.

Instead, make abilities that players choose to use. To get favor on their attack, they need to cry their battle cry aloud. To use their colossal strength, they have to hulk out. And if there’s a constant bonus (you’re immune to poisons!), contrast it with a strange factor that makes it so the player can’t forget it (…because your nervous system is made up of fungus and you need to constantly eat new types of mushrooms or you’ll die).

No set-it-and-forget abilities! Make buttons for the players to push to activate their talents.

Talents should offer you new ways to approach problems

Each talent is a way to break the rules–the rules of the game and the rules of the world. As players accumulate abilities, they gain new tools in their toolbelt. The open-ended, deadly challenges of the Underworld should only be able to be solved through the judicious use of the weird tools the players have at their disposal: the floor is made of lava, but I can shimmy along the walls; the guard has the keys to our cell but I have a long sticky tongue that can grab them off of his belt; the freezing mist makes it difficult to fight the skeletons, but the wind owes me a favor so I’ll blow it away.

Don’t start with the mechanics; start with what you’re imagining the ability does in the fiction. Then figure out how to represent it using the rules of the game.

I think it’s fun to actually provide abilities that really let you break the rules (“I’m immune to damage! I can fly! I can phase through walls!”) as long as they’re temporary and have significant drawbacks (“…because I’m a ghost! I can’t touch anything! If I’m not back into my body by the end of the watch I die for real!”).

Relatedly, if an ability just duplicates the utility of having a tool, the usefulness is limited. Yeah, having hair that can be grown long as ropes sounds cool (…well, wait, that does sound pretty cool), but 9 times out of 10 you’ll be better off just bringing rope in your pack.

Talents should be unique

As much as possible, abilities should feel unique. Having four spells that are duplicates of each other, except each does a different type of elemental damage, is just a waste of page space.

Abilities that you choose during character creation are a way for a player to tacitly communicate with the GM: This is my kinda dude, and I wanna do these sorta things. I’m a fighter, I want to fight. I’m a sorcerer, give me an opportunity to use my spells. The uniqueness principle offers some niche protection to players. It feels lame when a wizard is better at stealing than the thief because they have spells like Knock, Invisibility, Audible Glamour, Sleep, etc.

Moreover, abilities that share a lot of surface area give rise to discussions about balance, which I cannot care less about. Abilities should be incomparable. Who can say whether it’s better to be able to fall long distances without being hurt versus being able to take on the shape of a mouse when you spend a Resolve? Both are useful in their own situations. One isn’t better than the other.

Talents shouldn’t negate an adventurer’s “general competence”

People have long said that the introduction of the Thief class is when D&D jumped the shark because it created a skill system that made the things that everybody should be doing (sneaking, climbing, listening) locked behind a single character class. (Trying to “fix” the Thief class is an OSR blog rite of passage.)

This is also the case of the “Breathing mermaid problem.” The Breathing mermaid problem describes a situation in RPGs where some character ability solves a problem you didn’t know you had. “With the Tracking feat, you can track.” Could I not before? Avoid rules that are defined by negation.

Adventurers are assumed to be competent. Every character can sneak, climb, listen at doors, hide in shadows, use rope, disarm foes, track game, etc. Abilities that change the expectation of what a competent person can do without a certain ability is a negative design pattern.

Talents shouldn’t overcome the essential dangers of the dungeon (light/darkness, hunger, resource scarcity, stress, equipment slots)

Perhaps most importantly, the back of the game book says that “Food, hunger, light, and inventory management are central to play and actually fun.” No ability should get rid of these essential threats. This is what the game is about! Abilities like “continual light” or “bag of holding” would reframe what His Majesty the Worm is all about as much as a spell called “Instantly Win: Spend a Resolve and you find your Quest and go home and the Worm dies.”

Two other posts about abilities that are “good” and “bad” for dungeon exploration games:

• Goblinpunch - Keep Dungeon Threats Threatening
• Udan Adan - Game Enhancing Powers and Game Ruining Powers

Homebrewing advice

Last, I’ll share the bit I have about homebrewing from the game:

I have a draft of something ready. It’s about 9 pages long. Would anybody like to provide editing and copyediting?

I can trade editing, copyediting, or layout work in exchange!

Almost every time I make a new dungeon for His Majesty the Worm, I sit down and open my Knock! magazines. I’ve read them each a hundred times, but every time I find some gem that re-inspires me. I flip through them, jotting down ideas as I go - random encounters, monsters, cool magic items. I come back later and flesh the notes out.

When I was writing His Majesty the Worm, if I found I couldn’t write that day, I always allowed myself to reread Dungeon Meshi. It was a big inspiration, and I found that returning to it would help me with my writer’s block.

What are your inspirations? Are they an RPG? A zine? A comic? A video game? Take the time to sit down for an hour and give them a revisit. Take notes about what you like and want to recreate from them. Your project will be richer for it.

The Rider-Waite images are in the public domain in America, and we can make them monochrome. In fact, I’m sure I did and have those images for the book, since I used them all. Hit me up if you want them.

Very excited to see small dungeons as projects!

One of the ways I managed to get art into His Majesty the Worm was by a community of generous artists who specifically host Patreons/Comradery accounts for gaming art. These folks are an incredible resource - providing affordable art for every day folks (me!).

When writing towards prompts, sometimes its profitable to write towards pieces of art that inspire you. All of the art I’m linking to below can be licensed from their creators from their linked accounts to be used in your projects.

Evlyn Moreau

Evlyn Moreau has content that ranges from the cute, to sci-fi, to horror, to fantasy. Everything she does is fun.

Maybe what you write are some concrete rules for werewolves.

Sophie SilverGlass

SilverGlass releases monthly art bundles on her Patreon that follow from patron-voted themes. Recently she’s been doing this series of contract posters that I think would be fun to put into your Worm games and literally hand out to your players during the City Phase.

Maybe you can stat this series?

Kattapulka

Kattapulka evokes beautiful and dreamy pieces of science fantasy art, and monthly releases some piece of NPC, creature, or item art.

Recently, they released these critters. Perhaps you could stat these monsters? Or maybe they are a feature of a dungeon - you have to collect them all to give to the Demon Frog in order to progress?

Fernando Salvaterra

Tome of Salvaterra releases a wonderful variety of monsters, maps, and other fantasy scenes. They are one of most-producing Patreons I support.

They recently did this skelesphinx idol. This is some sort of dread dungeon feature. How does it work? What treasure does it guard?

Amanda Lee Franck

Amanda Lee Franck releases art packs, decorative borders, even her own games every month on Comradery.

Here’s a potential cover image for your dungeon level. It looks peaceful, but certainly contains danger. What will the adventurers find within?

Anyway, hope some of these get your brain going and I hope you have found some new-to-you artists for your projects. I encourage you to patronize as many artists on a regular basis as you can so you can hoard the art they come out with every month!

For myself, I am making a small section of a dungeon that I would like to use as a hub level for future Underworld iterations. I am trying to lean into a Firelink Shrine vibe for it.

Would love to collaborate with anybody who has cartography or art skills!