Posts on Doomed Zone - RPG Modules & Adventures

2025 Releases

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 20:19:04 -0800

Here’s what was finished and released this year.

The Old Blood - An investigation in a decaying city built on overlapping layers of rot

Doomed to Die #1 - Beneath Stillroot - First issue of a small zine, a short adventure in a hamlet where an entity is using the former villagers as puppets.

The White Beast of Sel Vorynn - A short adventure through the dreams of a dying alien mind.

Cold and Exposure

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 10:40:48 -0800

I’ve been working on a big project for a while and as part of that I needed to come up with some rules to handle cold and exposure since Shadowdark doesn’t cover this in the core rules. Since that is still long ways off and these can be useful on their own I am sharing them here.

The rules aim to fit in with Shadowdark’s existing systems and focus on mitigation through the appropriate gear the expense of encumbrance or effects on an unprepared character.

Pharmacy Run Postmortem

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 15:51:27 -0700

Introduction

“Americhaos 1994 is a complete hypertext role playing rule book. The game itself is not played on the computer. It is to be used as a hypertext set of rules for playing the game with friends.” read the description of AC94.ZIP, a file for download on a local BBS. The context necessary when it sat next to shareware demos for early Apogee and Epic DOS games. Even amongst now forgotten Adventure inspired text based games that could be mistaken for one another, it stood out., If not itself unique, it’s uniquely ahead of its time and as such has been hiding out in the back of my head since I first saw it years ago.

What I Mean by BLUNT

Wed, 21 May 2025 14:24:27 -0700

There’s a blog post I see referenced a lot, Six Cultures of Play by the Retired Adventurer, that taxonomizes TTRPGs into traditions of play. It’s a useful broad look at the history of D&D and related RPGs and makes some interesting points about differences between Classic (early challenge-driven pre Holmes edition in 1977) and how later OSR retroclone games appear similar but often contrast in terms of challenge (balanced escalation vs. PC driven decision making where balance is not a main focus of challenge). I think it is a well written and thoughtful piece providing some definitions for what previously had kind of been nebulous or lumped together under a general OSR-as-not-Wizards-of-the-Coast-D&D umbrella. As the post states, “most individual gamers and groups are a blend of cultures, with that blend realised as an individual style”—these are large-scale trends, not rigid categories.

Rogue DHCP Server

Mon, 19 May 2025 16:34:03 -0700

It’s the early 2000s. Someone brought their home laptop to work, but there’s only one ethernet port in their office. No problem, they also brought their brand new white plastic Netgear router. Just unplug the desktop, plug it into the router, and… bam, bring down half the network.

Why the Network Died

Computers plugged into the work network get assigned an IP address from the network’s DHCP server. But that little Netgear router? It’s running its own DHCP server. Now when a computer starts up and says:

Shrine Generator

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 16:33:35 -0800

Made a quick Shrine Generator for use with The Lost Tomb of Queen Rhawen, it can generate most of the shrines in the module but is expanded with some more options for the shrine itself and its history and potential controversies it has caused.

Here is a sample:

A knee-high altar made of bronze, depicting a skeletal warrior. It is completely shattered, with only fragments remaining, with a tattered piece of red cloth tied around it left nearby. A local gang claims it protects them from the city guard. The shrine next to it is dedicated to a rival god, and tensions simmer daily.

Getting Lost in Dungeons

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 15:20:42 -0800

Dungeons are great, they are a non arbitrary limitation on what players in a TTRPG can do. It’s a confined space that by limiting freedom facilitates meaningful actions. Players in a dungeon are experiencing play at the most immediate scale with the least amount of abstraction. A dungeon is a defined understandable space at a level that a 6 or 12 mile wilderness hex cannot be.

Often what can be is more exciting than knowing the truth and the transition between the known and unknown state is exploration. As players work their way through a dungeon they are narrowing down limitless possibilities to a single understood reality. When you open the door and the area that could contain a manticore becomes the area that either does or does not. But the player’s understanding of the space, partially as a disconnect of trying to visualize a 3d space from descriptions, is not perfect. The manticore could always be invisible.

Canticle to the Goddess

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 09:36:35 -0700

Overview

Canticle to the Goddess is an 8-page adventure made for the recent Knave 2e Adventure Game Jam by Jim Laskey and really stood out for its unique and creative ideas.

The adventure involves dealing with multiple factions in a temple divided into five sections, each featuring its own challenges and hazards. It includes a table for events that change the dungeon’s dynamics and optional musical puzzles that can be used on doors between the sections.

Combat Stagnation

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 08:59:14 -0700

Introduction

A common online complaint about TTRPG systems I have seen is that combat can stagnate and turn the game into a slog. I think there are a couple of main contributors to this, and while I think you can have fun combat in any system, some mechanics do contribute to this. Other factors can include novelty wearing off, a lack of stakes or relevance, and a lack of dynamic elements in encounters. These all lead to the real issue: a shift from narrative immersion to pure mechanics. While there is intrinsic enjoyment in rolling dice, most people aren’t captivated by doing basic repetitive math.

Central Hub

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 18:45:09 -0700

Doomed Zone: New Central Hub

I’ve set up this site—doomed.zone—to be the central place for all my OSR modules going forward. This is where you’ll be able to find everything I’ve made, all in one spot. While I’m using platforms Itch.io to distribute my work, I wanted a place that’s totally under my control, so you can always count on it being there, no matter what.

If Itch or other platforms change, go down, or become hard to access, you can always come to doomed.zone and find the latest versions of my modules, updates, or anything new I’m working on.