The Dripping Tap

I've been thinking a lot about sewers this month. I continue to plug-away at Dungeon 23, and August's level is a section of sewers from Myr Regath, the city that is now a megadungeon. My long-running story game, set in an Urban Fantasy metropolis, also features a lot of sewer exploration and adventuring. Archetypal of the human struggle to maintain public health amidst growing crowds and communities, they make great sites for adventure. Tight, cramped corridors extending into darkness, an ecosystem all its own, you're bound to come across the carcasses of anything and everything the city-above discards. The waste - literal, and metaphorical - intermingle in a sewer. They fit the old-school definition of a "dungeon" or site of adventure even better , I think, than the historical donjons that we got the English dungeon . To this end, I picked up Beneath the Metropolis | The Secret Lives of Cities by Alex Marshall from my local library. Friendly reminder to go and ...

Earlier this year, when I used my substack like a blog (which I've now separated into blog & newsletter) I wrote up a love-letter to Ava Islam's ERRANT . Over the course of this year - working on Dungeon23, looking for my next long-term TTRPG system - I've fallen more firmly in love with the Old School Renaissance and the kind of play it encourages. You can read that article here . It's a good window into where I was back in May, falling in love with old-school play and sensibilities and still trying to form the language to describe what I liked about it. I've had plenty of OSR experience playing, running and designing for M Ö RK BORG, but my personal life has been so rocky the past year or so I never truly actualized on that scene like I would've liked. At the end of my initial ERRANT article I created a covenant for the game. Here on this new form of my blog I want to revisit this content, updating it and getting it in front of more eyes. Behold, TSATHOG...

  Welcome Hearthside to The Dripping Tap, traveler. Here's a list of some of my favorite books, ttrpgs and historical sources that inspire me to run and make TTRPGs. In no particular order: BOOKS: The Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark City of Brass (and the Daevabad Cycle) by S.A. Chakraborty The Black Company by Glen Cooke Terry Pratchett's Discworld Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. by Mike Mignola Dune by Frank Herbert Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin The Dying Earth by Jack Vance TTRPGs : Primal Quest Gubat Banwa HIS MAJESTY THE WORM Mothership Oops All Draculas! Errant Cantrip Here, There, Be Monsters! M Ö RK BORG Frontier Scum PIRATE BORG Wyrd Science magazine Ghosts of the Sierra Verde & Wolves Upon the Coast Everything SandyPug Games does, but especially HELLPIERCERS   ART :  Gustave Dore Artem Demura Brom   Ezra Rose DysonLogos Blog Venommoe Hazem Ameen Anato Finnstark Andres Rios SOURCES : God's Shadow by Alan Mikhail Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon Mutual A...