Star Wars D&D and a campaign book

From New York Comic-Con, news of a Star Wars D&D rulebook and the preview of the campaign book Tyro Squadron Adventures

Yes you’re playing Rebels.

First thought: Darth Vader’s right there. Ever seen an RPG cover with a bunch of characters doing heroic poses and thought “They’re all gonna die next round” because of who they’re up against?

Oh well, at least it isn’t the FFG system.

RPGaDAY 2026 26. Regret

#RPGaDAY 2026

26. Regret

26. One game you regret not trying?

Having read the full adventure series for Orpheus I couldn’t really play it when offered a chance, though it was a few years later. I’d really have to run it.

And scheduling has prevented me playing Buffy and Adventure! at the Nationals, Alien and Mothership in the last two years at GEAS, and more.

As a GM there are... let’s say a few I’d like to get to the table someday. Including a break from “first chance to play this, do something normal” setups for the games I do run, like high society historical Vampire instead of usually scuzzy modern, or going all-in on the black market and thief setup that didn’t come together last year. Running Trinity Continuum would be nice too.

Okay, Orpheus is a good choice for one, as it’s a reference to someone who regrets looking back. Ha ha.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

Can a conspiracy survive an idiot?

Greg Stolze plans out a Delta Green plot hook about recent government slash and burn tactics.

OK, my idea for DELTA GREEN, which someone else could definitely write or homebrew is, in short, DOGE found The Program.

Gar Hanrahan on DIE: The Metadungeon

Gareth Hanrahan on the DIE RPG: Metadungeon at DIE creator Kieron Gillen’s RPG blog. “Declarations of conflict of interest are for lesser bloggers.”

“Possibly it’s all an attempt to justify the piles of RPG books I bought but never actually used. Exorcising the ghosts of games unplayed.”

Ken and Robin talk introductory adventures

Ken And Robin Talk About Stuff usually has something worth checking, but will add an extra plug for this week for the opening section on introductory adventures. They recommend going for the core activity and pilot episode. But how do you present that for something broad like, looking at a helpful example, Vampire? Examples are meeting to discuss big political change and the Prince giving them an annoying order and how to deal with it. Also blood-drinking as a terror tactic in war, disapproving father stock characters, and chess magic.

Adventure Calendar 2025: Fairytales

The complete collection of adventure ideas and plot hooks and a few items based on folk and fairytales

0: Fairytales

1: The Snow Queen

2: Cinderella

3: Jack And The Beanstalk

4: Jack Tales

5: Dick Whittington And His Cat

6: Puss In Boots

7: Snow White

8: The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

9: Peter Pan

10: Sleeping Beauty

11: Beauty And The Beast

12: Little Red Riding Hood

13: The Three Little Pigs

14: Goldilocks And The Three Bears

15: The Princess Bride

16: Aladdin

17: Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves

18: Sinbad

19: The Little Mermaid

20: Rapunzel

21: Midwinter

22: The Town Musicians Of Bremen

23: The Frog Prince

Addendum: The Emperor’s New Clothes

24: The Nutcracker

Season’s greetings!

Adventure Calendar 2025 10: Sleeping Beauty

Adventure Calendar 2025

10: Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty - a princess, a curse, good fairies, bad fairies, a prince who actually gets to do something.

Stick to the rules of hospitality. Especially when the fair folk are involved or they’ll spite you. Then hope the pure evil members don’t want to come to the party anyway.

As classic fairytale princesses go Sleeping Beauty is the most helpless damsel, spending most of the story in magical suspended animation, more a McGuffin than a character, which is an issue for an aspirational figure as well as a viewpoint title character. Since somebody needs to end up in a cursed coma for the story to happen there’s only so much you can do in this case.

(When heroes are revived like this it’s a call to action and the start of a story instead.)

As a result the often dull romantic foil hero prince guy gets more to do in the later parts of the story than usual. In the Disney version he even gets to fight a dragon.

Hell Yes

This also names the wicked fairy Maleficent and makes her a full-on demonic villain, Mistress Of All Evil.

Leading to a live-action deconstruction where she’s... not.

The cursed castle sitting silent for somewhere between a few days and a hundred years depending on retelling makes this more like a later fantasy quest than most fairytales, with a clear villain and dungeon-bashy obstacles. Other adventurers have tried their luck against it in versions where the curse lasted longer.

The Silent Palace

They say the palace is under a curse. No-one has left it for twenty years or more. Many have braved the way in but few have returned and none have broken the spell...

Adventure Calendar 2025 9: Peter Pan

Adventure Calendar 2025

9: Peter Pan

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie was created as a stage play in 1904 with a book following in 1911, so it takes a more modern look at various fairytale motifs. Peter Pan himself is mercurial and possibly dangerous, needing some sense talked into him, while opposed by the clearly rotten Captain Hook. A group of children are taken to Neverland and they have decidedly different views about this situation. Flying is clearly fun, but that needs some help from fairies who function on belief and audience participation.

In 1929, Barrie gave the copyright to Great Ormond Street Hospital for children, so Peter Pan is actually doing good for kids to this day.

Neverland is developed enough to have maps, as well as a spinoff series set there as well as various sequels to the original story. And if a fantasy land has a map, you can probably run a game there.

The name comes from Pan pipes, connecting him to Pan, the Greek god of nature and shepherding and folk music, and Greek gods are generally trouble.

Green men and satyrs often appear with pipes and flutes. One of the most famous M. R. James stories is about blowing an old whistle. The Wind In The Willows features The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, a Pan figure who recently got someone asked to take off a shirt showing him in Westminster Abbey so this is still a thing. (Much to the delight of the Hellebore sales team who made it.)

And he also connects to the idea of fairy abduction, changelings and the like. Compare the Pied Piper, a story where some versions end where this begins.

Also, pirates.

The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

The sun has not risen. The PCs have to find out why.

Adventure Calendar 2025 8: The Pied Piper

Adventure Calendar 2025

8: The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

Dick Whittington made his fortune catching rats and that reminded me of another story about a highly successful rat catcher who had more trouble getting paid: The Pied Piper Of Hamelin.

A town has a serious rat problem, and a guy in a strange costume comes and says he can make all the rats leave, the town elders agree to pay him if he can, and he plays a magic pipe and the rats line up and follow him out of town. And now the town elders go back on the deal. So the piper switches to a different tune that night and leads all the town’s children away, and they are never seen again.

The lesson here is pay your freelancers.

We’re entering the Scarred For Life part of the fairytale collection here, aren’t we?

Sure, there are versions where the town elders pay up and the kids return, or the piper takes them to a nicer place where people pay their bills, but those are adjustments. There are also versions where he leads the rats to the river to drown and you are left to draw your own conclusions about what happens to the kids.

We had a picture book of this when I was little, and the piper was colorful, elfin and a little bit sinister.

Disney actually made this as a short in 1933, with one of the nice endings, but see also this classic creepy stop motion animated film by Jiří Barta (trailer) and the not much less creepy version from Cosgrove Hall. Compare the version with Donovan for a less devilish take.

There’s also a DC villain turned hero in The Flash rogues’ gallery and the time a Dire Wraith does it in ROM: Spaceknight.

Rat Catchers are of course the archetypal not-really-heroes of Warhammer Fantasy Role-play, but come with a Small But Vicious Dog rather than magical pipe. Skaven seem to prefer drums and bells, which feels like a missed opportunity.

For magical rodent problems that definitely aren’t panto fare, see the story of Bishop Hatto.

And pipes in general are a bit sketchy in fairytales...

Catch A Rat Today

Ah, the most basic MMO mission, get ten rats out of a basement. But where are they all coming from? Is there a Rat king or other guiding intelligence behind this? Is it targeting specific victims? Maybe a nightclub attacked using Animalism in Vampire...

Adventure Calendar 2025 7: Snow White

Adventure Calendar 2025

7: Snow White

Seven. See what I did there?

Founding Disney Princess, Snow White has the rightful heir to a throne cast down by her stepmother, threatened due to vanity and forced to escape, taking refuge with Dwarfs (not Dwarves) and saved from apparent death by true love’s kiss.

This story has had plenty of deconstructions and reconstructions, including Snow White And The Huntsman taking direct influence from Warhammer Fantasy as well as Snow White: A Tale Of Terror, several central roles in Once Upon A Time, and the recent live-action-ish Disney remake.

(There’s always been some horror in the mix, the Disney version models the Queen’s transformation on Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.)

How much agency Snow has varies from version to version - the Disney version is actually pretty active, though she doesn’t get into any sword fights.

But you can still get miniatures for them.
(This set is from the 40s or 50s.)

Also there’s a kinda evil or just unhelpful magic mirror. I’m all about that.

Who Is The Fairest

A vain monarch takes against one of the PCs or someone close because they just happen to be better at something the monarch takes pride in. Reason to drive them out, and possibly a self-perpetuating problem...

Adventure Calendar 2025 4: Jack Tales

Adventure Calendar 2025

4: Jack Tales

Jack is an archetypal tricky everyman found in the UK and also in Appalachian folklore. An underdog getting into and out of trouble with his wits and trickery, having run-ins with authority and the supernatural.

He’s basically a player character.

Jack And The Beanstalk has a young naïve example, so feels like a separate thing.

Fables had Jack being the same guy (as it did with the romantic foil Prince IIRC) getting a spinoff series where he actively spread stories to empower himself, with inevitably mixed results.

There’s also a Samurai Jack episode called Jack Tales as a reference but he isn’t the same storied Jack, it’s just a nickname and his usual method of solving problems is more direct in an equally player character way.

Jack And The Keep On The Borderlands

How do PCs deal with an archetypal PC? A band of adventurers follow rumours to a dungeon and find it’s already been cleaned out. Someone already rescued that dragon from that princess. They start to hear tell of a legendary hero going around doing the kind of stuff they should be doing. When they finally meet this guy, whether he’s a thief blessed with some wits and a lot of luck or a literally archetypal adventurer and the exemplar of the role they play in the world, will they ally with him or try to get him out of their way?

Adventure Calendar 2025 3: Jack And The Beanstalk

Adventure Calendar 2025

3: Jack And The Beanstalk

Chosen because it’s the local big panto this year, Jack And The Beanstalk is the one where a poor boy is talked into selling the family’s cow for some magic beans, but they’re real magic beans so that’s okay, and they grow a giant beanstalk that could provide enough beans to be the basis of a revived farming business but instead he climbs it all the way to a castle above the clouds where he robs the giant owner, escapes back down and cuts the beanstalk down so the giant falls and he can keep the loot, including a talking harp.

It sounds really weird when laid out like that..

It’s adjacent to the various Jack stories about an underdog trickster type, this Jack does win with a bit of trickery but a lot of luck.

Castles in the sky are a classic fantasy motif, and magic items like fast-growing vines and animated musical instruments as well.

What I most wonder is who just sold him a perfectly good magic bean?

The Magic Merchants

Disguised godlike types giving gifts to the kind and punishments to the guilty? Or just getting by on the barter economy?

Adventure Calendar 2025 2: Cinderella

Adventure Calendar 2025

2: Cinderella

The lead Disney Princess, the story of Cinderella is also popular for pantomimes as it has a beautiful and somewhat feisty heroine, a villainous stepmother and ugly stepsisters, a fancy dress transformation suitable for a costume design showoff moment. No fight at the end but you can’t have everything.

The motif of finding the heroine through a lost shoe goes back as far as a Greek story told around the BCE/CE turnover, but Cinderella mostly codified in France with Charles Perrault in 1697, after an Italian version in 1634.

She generally only has so much agency and ends up needing a lot of help, though some versions give her a more active part. See Sapsorrow, the version dramatised in The Storyteller, where she escapes a terrible fate and makes a new one for herself with a magical disguise and some dress theft.

And a happily ever after

The lack of a fight at the end makes this less immediately adaptable to standard RPG shape, but the mix of magic, fancy royal events and attempts to subvert it lends itself to toying with it as the PCs are the ones trying to help or hinder something like this. See Witches Abroad for an example.

I’ve actually addressed Cinderella for Relics, with the Fairy Godmother’s Needle as a quietly powerful item that can remake clothing and allow someone creative to spin up beautiful fashions and flawless disguises. I also found that there’s no standard origin or name for the Fairy Godmother so I made her Aglaea of the Three Graces.

You Shall Go To The Ball

The PCs get a chance to attend the fanciest formal event of the season - whether they want to or not - and perhaps get mixed up in romances and schemes, and maybe see someone there who needs some PC shenanigans style help.

Adventure Calendar 2025 1: The Snow Queen

Adventure Calendar 2025

1: The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen

As the example I cited in the intro post this seems as good a place to start as any. Scottish Ballet is doing it this year and The Ice Tower is currently in cinemas about an actress playing the queen and a fan getting caught up in the world.

It was also the starting point for Frozen though the result is pretty different - see early designs here that are more like a blue Cruella before making Elsa a beloved superhero.

The Snow Queen isn’t a traditional story, it was published in 1844 in a book literally called New Fairy Tales, but it’s familiar enough now.

It starts with the Devil creating a mirror that shows only the worst in everything and breaking it in an attempt to invade Heaven and that’s just the prologue. One of the splinters goes into a boy named Kai’s eye and this makes him a target for the Snow Queen, so his friend Gerda sets off to rescue him. On the way she has various side adventures and is helped and hindered by royalty, talking animals and the like.

It’s very much the kind of story you might get from playing Once Upon A Time. So for RPGs it would be an easy adaptation to kitchen-sinky fantasy, while the motley assortment of heroes trying to rescue someone from a sinister powerful type’s fortress is one of the most basic story outlines we could take.

The Devil’s mirror could be a plot hook all on its own - I could drop it into Relics or some World Of Darkness games with ease.

Cold-tinted glasses

A pair of antique spectacles made with glass from the Devil’s mirror, allowing a user to see the flaws in everything. Useful for engineering and proofreading and the like, but likely to leave you with a negative view of the world.

Adventure Calendar 2025: Fairytales

Adventure Calendar 2025

0: Fairytales

For my seventh year doing festive adventure ideas daily (click December 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 in my blog archive) and this year a number of stories sorta kinda related to Christmas - fairytales.

The Princess Bride poster

Has it got any sports in it?

Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...

Doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll try to stay awake.

Oh, well, thank you very much, very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.

The Princess Bride

Here in the UK theatres put on pantomimes for families around this time, a uniquely British mix of classic fairytales, vaudeville humour, audience participation and crossdressing. A lot of the stories will also be familiar from the Disney canon. Ballet companies bring out the likes of The Snow Queen as well for the Christmas season, so those are fair game too. Now to find a list with enough of them...

If I run out I will borrow from The Storyteller, not least as it included a story about running out of stories.

Operation: CRIMSON GIFT

A bundle of Night’s Black Agents and Dracula Dossier PDFs declassified by Pelgrane for eyes only.

STA Valiant 9

So I knew the Star Trek Adventures Shackleton Expanse campaign had linked TOS and TNG adventures and a possible time jump. I did not know the specifics.

RPGaDAY 2025 25 - Challenge

#RPGaDAY2025

25 - Challenge

Day 25 of the 2025 challenge is Challenge! I see what you did there.

Challenge characters to duels, or to complete tasks or labours, tempt them with wagers.

(Ever had an entire game based around one like Around The World In Eighty Days?)

These can be the body of the game so there are RPGs based around sports and fighting contests, or major or minor sidelines like the extensive jousting and tournament sections in Pendragon.

And you can simulate games in other games. You could play chess for real, but what if your character is substantially better at it than you are? You could narrate it, rely on stats, or adjust the game to fit. See also the issue of player versus character skill in puzzles, which is why I hardly ever use puzzles.

This is how an official boardgame for the TV series about chess The Queen’s Gambit happened, which looks like an interesting deceit mechanic sort of connected to chess.

Also it's for up to four players, which is a bit different too.

And the gangster RPG Mob Justice uses poker as a mechanic - but the number of cards you get is based on your stats, mixing player skill with a bit less of the randomness of the normal game.

(Small aside; Challenge was GDW’s house magazine for its SF games and others too. I started getting it with one of its more horror-tinged Halloween issues and the haunted spaceship MegaTraveller adventure Fated Voyage is an all-time classic that I’ve run for Doctor Who and off-brand Star Trek games.)

25a - 1, 6, 2

Who, Optimistic, Character

Is it really a good idea to bet all our money on a joust against the knight who never removes his helmet?

Runeslinger

Unknown Armies: Jailbreak

Ludonarrative Dissidents takes a deep dive at this classic adventure with writer and member Greg Stolze there to discuss it.

FiveEvil

FiveEvil is out now in PDF.