At the Shrine of Fortitude: A supplement of characters and creatures for His Majesty the Worm

 In the Lower Ossuary, there is a shrine to the minor Mythric goddess Fortitude. There, merchants catering to adventuring guilds sometimes gather in the light of the hearthfire kindled at the shrine.

Download for free from Itch

This is a free supplement for His Majesty the Worm that details a procedure to generate a hub for your mythic Underworld. It is designed to be an area that can be dropped into any dungeon.

• When the guild arrives at the Shrine of Fortitude, each player draws 1 card from the minor arcana deck and tells the GM if they got a face card. The GM uses this draw to determine who is currently doing business at the Shrine of Fortitude.
• These merchants can range from the weird to the wonderful, from dangerous to delightful. 
• Each merchant has a scrap of dialogue to help guide their role-playing.
• Also includes rules for a new monster: the clown clones. (Clown content warning!)

This supplement was created as part of the 2024 Worm Jam.

Check it out! 

Information Architecture in The Castle Automatic

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.

Focusing your time creatively

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.

How to write new abilities

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:

By the way...

Did you know the Worm Jam is currently going on? It's a space for folks starting new games of His Majesty the Worm to collaborate with each other. Come join us!

Somewhere in the Underworld, there are cloning machines that endlessly replicate the flesh of a woman born ages ago named Xania. 

It's all Xania

At some point, these processes went wrong and some of the clones escaped. Fungus was involved, with the fungoid's natural powers of mimicry being cross-pollinated into the cloning sequences. Instead of being perfect clones, they suffered physical and mental abnormalities: bleached white skin, bright and unnatural hair colors, swollen red noses, a lack of emotional regulation. These twisted clones are called "clowns."

Clowns 

by tori-otto

The clown begins its lifecycle as a "clown slug" (sometimes also called a "clown tadpole"). These creatures are about a yard long: a slimy slug-like "foot" attached to a grotesque humanoid face: white skin speckled with a unique pattern, red lips pulled into a rictus grin, swollen red nose, curly bright hair. They move slowly on land but can swim quickly through the water. Clown slugs hatch from eggs laid by a clown queen.

Dealing with a clown slug is more like navigating a hazard than a battle. Avoiding a clown slug is a test of Swords. 

• If you have a free hand, you gain favor on the test. 
• If you are carrying a weapon, you can slay the clown slug if you succeed on the test. 
• If you are carrying a torch or lantern, you can choose to Destroy the light source to slay the clown slug if you succeed on the test.
• On a failure, the clown slug latches onto your face and force feeds you its clown juice before dropping dead and shriveling up. You gain the clowned affliction. 
• On a great failure, the affliction's final stage occurs within a few moments - you have no hope of survival.

Clowned (Affliction)

Stage 1: Feelin' fine! False alarm! Requires 6 charges to cure.

Stage 2: Your chest bursts open. A full-sized clown pulls its way free from the small space. You die and are replaced by the clown clone.

Feral Clown Clone (Dungeon Denizen)

Sorcerous Strategist 

Clown clones have all the memories of their past selves. Sometimes they seem peaceful, helpful even. Other times, they pull their way out their old husk and are hungry for meat. These clowns might try to attack their former companions, or skitter away into the darkness to stalk their prey over the coming watches. They will use all of their knowledge about their former companions during their hunt, attacking whoever seems most vulnerable and targeting their weakest points.

Attributes: Swords 3 | Pentacles 4 | Cups 2 | Wands 1

Health/Defense: 3/3

Likes: Laughter, Eating Raw Meat, Happy Music

Hates: Open Spaces, Children

Notes

Prat Fall. If an Attack or similar action fails to hit the clown's Initiative, that action now targets another creature in the same zone (even the adventurer doing the action). 

Rubber Bodies. Clowns can squish themselves down into any space a cat could crawl into. They are immune to bludgeoning weapons such as hammers or maces (they HONK if they're hit by such weapons). They can fall great distances without taking harm. They take 2 Wounds from piercing weapons such as arrows and spears.

Scurry. On its turn, the clown can Move 1 zone without spending a card.

Lesser dooms

Buffoonery. When you Roughhouse, you can target all adventurers in your zone. Your Roughhouse actions can deliver the following effects:

• Disarm
• Displace
• Exhaust
• Notch
• Root
• Silence
• Trip

A clown that Attacks a creature that's Tripped or Rooted deals Piercing damage.

Greater dooms

Expeditious Retreat. Discard a greater doom card to automatically disengage from all combatants (p. 109). This action does not count towards the one card per turn limit.

Smell Ya Later. If the clown is not engaged with combatant, play a greater doom card to dramatically go off stage by crawling into a rat hole or hopping down a pit. The clown escapes the Challenge and may return to plague the guild at a later point.

Clowns (Adventurer Option)

Your character is dead. You may choose to play a clown for a while, if you want.

You essentially begin as a new character. You have the same Quest and all of your previous character's memories. You can inherit your old character's gear. 

Your Bond with every other character in your guild is always "Ally." You love making them laugh!

You no longer have any Path Talents from your old life. Instead, you have six new Clown Talents. You begin with one Talent mastered. Any unspent or spent XP your previous character had may be spent to master your Clown Talents.

New Talents

All or Nothing

When making a test of fate, say you're going all or nothing. Instead of drawing a card, flip a coin. Heads you succeed. Tails you fail. You cannot push fate or achieve a great success when you go all or nothing.

Buffoonery

During Challenges, you may Roughhouse as a minor action with either a Pentacles or Swords card. 

Additionally, you gain several new Roughhouse options:

• Exhaust

• Notch

• Silence

Quick!

During Challenges, if you are wearing light or no armor, you may treat Pentacles actions as interrupts.

Rubber Body

You can squeeze through any gap about as big as your head. You can fold yourself down into a very small size (about 2 slots). 

You do not take damage from falls. You squeak if you fall from any height or are Tripped.

Smell Ya Later

At any point, you may declare that you go sneaking. This allows you to go dramatically off-stage.

Later, if you are not present in a scene and it’s at least somewhat plausible that you could have snuck  there, spend a Resolve to arrive on the scene dramatically.

Surprise!

In the first round of a Challenge, whenever you would deal damage, you deal 2 Wounds instead of 1.

Spend a Resolve to resist being ambushed. You raise a hue and cry to warn your guild of the threat beforehand.

Up my Sleeve

You may declare that you have had a common, one-slot item with you the whole time. Twice per Crawl (one for each sleeve), spend a Resolve and declare that you had a [blank] up your sleeve. This can include a lockpick, a dagger, a handkerchief, an empty vial, a length of wire, or anything else that the GM generally finds viable.

But Doctor, I Am Pagliacci

When a clown's Quest is complete, they cannot retire to the City. Without a (demi)human purpose, they  will advance into their next stage of life and become an extremely dangerous clown queen. This process takes several weeks. They begin by regurgitating silk handkerchiefs, with which they will form a cocoon. The Clown Queen is a dungeon lord level monster and will be controlled by the GM.

Unblock yourself by returning to your inspirations

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.

By the way...

Did you know the Worm Jam is currently going on? It's a space for folks starting new games of His Majesty the Worm to collaborate with each other. Come join us!

Mining Inspiration from Art

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?

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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!

By the way...

Did you know the Worm Jam is currently going on? It's a space for folks starting new games of His Majesty the Worm to collaborate with each other. Come join us!

Lists of cool things

Another technique you can use to defeat the tyrant blank page is to make big lists of cool things.

Let’s say that you’re working on a dungeon and you’re hoping to create 20-ish rooms, or maybe you’re just working on a Meatgrinder. How can you possibly have that many interesting ideas? Well, first just create grist for your mill.

Start by just writing down stuff you like. There’s something alchemical about it, once you start you almost can’t stop.

Here is a list of things I think are cool:

• Leylines
• Using spells at the nexus of a leyline having a bigger effect
• Casting spells at certain times of the year for a bigger effect
• Laser eyes
• Humans having dragon breath
• Really long jumps
• Iron maidens (torture device, not band)
• Runestones
• Moving huge big runestones over long distances?
• Moai
• Fossils
• Horseshoe crabs
• Blueblood

You sort of get my point. I can keep going forever just doing free word association. Anyway, now that I have a big list, I got my brain going. It’s a good way to start a writing day.

By the way...

Did you know the Worm Jam is currently going on? It's a space for folks starting new games of His Majesty the Worm to collaborate with each other. Come join us!

Writing towards prompts

There is no tyrant as cruel as the blank page.

For many people (especially me), being told “Write a story! It can be about anything!” is neither a compelling or welcoming prompt. Its open-ended nature does not fill me with the wonder of possibility. “Write a story about your summer vacation” is a much easier prompt because it’s more specific (and thus, more restrictive - restrictions foster creativity!).

Write towards prompts.

Some of my strongest writing has been when I forced myself to write to a specific prompt - an image, a tarot card, an illustration, an I-Ching hexagram, two combined results from random tables, whatever. For example, here is a series of encounters I wrote to a random batch of medieval illuminations from Pinterest. I think these are as strong as they are because I forced myself to write to a random assortment of strange images.

There’s a special type of creativity that unlocks when you struggle with forcing yourself to write about one specific thing. You stare at the prompt and wrack your brain, thinking and thinking. How in the hell am I going to write a dungeon room about the III of Cups? And then it comes to you! And it’s SO GOOD! It’s way better writing than if you just had tried to “Write a dungeon” with no guidance.

When you are working on your projects, you can defeat the blank page but starting from prompts. Perhaps the Dungeon Seeds can guide you?

By the way...

Did you know the Worm Jam is currently going on? It's a space for folks starting new games of His Majesty the Worm to collaborate with each other. Come join us!