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Friday, July 4, 2025

Bundle of Holding - His Majesty the Worm



I see His Majesty the Worm Bundle as an aspirational purchase. I doubt I'll play it as is, but I hope to find parts that I can use with other OSR rule sets and future campaigns. For those purposes, 14.95 is a bargain.

Adventurer! This His Majesty the Worm Bundle presents His Majesty the Worm, a megadungeon-crawling fantasy roleplaying game from Josh McCrowell at Rise Up Comus. The Underworld blasphemes the earth under the City at the center of the world. You and your guild-mates have personal quests that compel them to step through the gate into those lightless depths. If you fulfill your quests, you can finally retire. Until then – in the cycle of descent, exploration, return, restock, rest – all that protects you is your Bonds of loyalty, rivalry, mentorship, and even love. Play them to the hilt, and you might survive

His Majesty the Worm page 26Eight years in the making, His Majesty the Worm reimagines the traditional dungeon crawl in a highly playable structure that spotlights the necessities of Underworld exploration: food, light, time, and the allies who keep you alive. Use tarot cards to generate the City, Underworld, characters, and monsters, and to run an action-packed Challenge system that ensures all players have interesting choices throughout every round of combat. With this .PDF rulebook you'll see why the Exalted Funeral His Majesty the Worm hardcover sold out in three hours.

Pay just US$14.95 for our Worm Collection (retail value $58) with DRM-free .PDF ebooks of the complete 411-page His Majesty the Worm rulebook, along with the cozy halfling-village game Under Hill, By Water and its travel expansion Walking Holiday.


Thursday, July 3, 2025

Free RPG - The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules (WEG D6)



A Quickstart that is 80+ pages long? Based on WEG classic D6 system? An official Planet of the Apes RPG? Holy crap! I'm gonna dive into The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules and see how the WEG D6 System holds up. I'm expecting a perfect fit :)

Return to the world where Apes rule over a dwindling human population.

In a world turned upside down, civilized apes sit at the top of the evolutionary ladder, ruling over a population of primal humans. But this dominion will not go unchallenged. Wayward astronauts arrive to lead an uprising, questioning this madness and the events that led to this topsy-turvy, backward future. Political intrigue, societal conflict, and fantastical, dangerous mysteries abound on this planet ruled by apes!

This Quickstart is just the beginning of your journey across a planet controlled by apes. This download allows you a glimpse of what's in store for you by letting you play pre-generated ape characters. In addition to adventures and rules for playing pre-generated simians, the complete Role-Playing Game of the Planet of the Apes Core Rulebook will allow your players to create their own characters. Just choose an ape and then choose an archetype to play. With the former quota system abolished, any ape can have any career. And gorillas,  orangutans, and chimpanzees are just the beginning. You can also assume the roles of mute tribal humans, two factions of mysterious mutants, and the most dangerous creatures of all— the so-called “astro-nauts”!

Instead of playing within one character group, you might want a more diverse gaming experience. You can even run adventure parties comprised of apes, mutants, and humans working together! Utilizing the Magnetic Variant of the world-renowned West End Games D6 game system (D6MV), the Core Rulebook also contains rules and statistics for the following: 

  • More gear, weapons, and vehicles, including spacecraft.
  • Twenty-four character templates to choose from!
  • New Character Quirks, Motives, and Remarkable Abilities.
  • Heroic Stun Rules.
  • Mysterious mutant Psionic Powers.
  • Keep track of fear, terror, and tensity with Psychometrics and Mental Trauma rules.
  • Statistics for a variety of fearsome Foes, awesome Allies, and mutated Monstrosities.
  • Environmental Zone Effects allow you to quickly drop your apes into any hostile environment!
  • Random episode hooks and easy episode generator tables help you create your own adventures on a planet where apes evolved from men!
  • For the whole experience, go to www.planetoftheapesRPG.com and get your stinkin’ paws on the Core Rulebook for the Role-Playing Game of the Planet of the Apes today!

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Free OSR - ShadowSpark Skeletal Foes (ShadowDark)


I've known Phil Reed for a decade or more, and I've been following his creative works for even longer. Phil's ShadowSpark Skeletal Foes for ShadowDark is a short PDF priced at PWYW pricing, and could work with other OSR games with minimal conversion, IMO.

Without a doubt, skeletons are one of my favorite types of monsters in any fantasy RPG. These animated dead are a wonderful foe for the heroes since they can wait around for decades (sometimes centuries) without any need to eat, drink, sleep, or the other requirements that living creatures possess. After all, no one need question how the skeletons were surviving in the dungeon all these years without access to food. They stand around and wait for the action.

In many RPGs, skeletons are treated as a single monster with one stat block. Combine that with their low power level and skeletons in most fantasy RPGs don’t give me enough variety, so I enjoy working up new types of skeletal foes for most systems.

This work expands on skeletons in the core game, presenting four new options that GMs may use to throw something other than the basic skeleton at the adventurers. 

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