Saturday, September 20, 2025

[Gudgeon Moon] Ite, The Four Fold World

Ite, the Four-Fold World, was the first recorded Splash. If the stories of the Pilgrims of Yordsk are to be believed, it was a world divided into four tetraspheres by huge oceanic trenches. Each tetrasphere was dominated by one of the species which survived into the modern day.


Myrivada

Each Myrivadan is roughly about ~1.6 - 1.7 meters tall, and look like a golden statue. Each one bears a rough humanoid form- like an abstract or symbolic depiction of a person- with no other consistencies in art style. Their poses also can vary, but most often depict gentle and restful poses.

Their bodies are not actually metallic, but some form of stiff exoskeleton. It is semi-permeable, as they are able to eat and drink merely through touching it, quickly vanishing food whenever you look away for a moment. When speaking, their voices actually come from the vibration of their exoskeleton, giving a certain resonance to their voices.

Their bodies also seem to have very limited flexibility, if any. While in polite company they often sit locked in their poses, relying on the kindness of others, subtle magic, or other implements in order to survive.

When they need to act or move though, a Myrivadan will reveal the truth. Below their exoskeleton are thousands of squirming insects, curled up in zen-like repose. They can briefly stir, and just barely phase out from inside in order to hold objects, move their bodies, etc. Under normal circumstances, they cannot leave a Myrivadan's body any more than your fingers could leave yours.

Despite seemingly being a colony being, Myrivadans possess one consciousness. Each insect merely gives rise to the whole.

Myrivadans do not breed. Instead: 10,000 Myrivadans seem to ever exist at one time. When one dies, it explodes into a cloud of ash and insect husks. At the same time: another Myrivada will spontaneously birth a new one as a fully-formed statue that branches and breaks off from itself.


Doubberrean (aka Doub)

Doub can vary widely in height, but conventional modern designs usually stand about ~2.4 meters tall. They are roughly humanoid shaped, but they have wide stout limbs and bodies covered in many layers of blubber and thick leathery grey skin.

A Doub's head is relatively under proportional, and is made up almost entirely by a long bulbous trunk-like nose and wide eyes with long horizontal slit-like pupils.

Their bodies do not have any bones, only fat and muscle and organs. They are held up purely by tension and blood pressure. You can hear their hearts flapping loudly from nearby, pumping the milky porridge that is their blood.

Doub do not breed either. Instead they may only be crafted by another Doub. Most Doub do not wish to talk about this process, as its an instinctual and base sort of subject.

In order for a Doub to craft another Doub, they must first obtain a Doub Totem. This sort of looks like a cross between a foetus, a sleeping goat, and a germinating seed. It is made of some sort of soft metal- which looks like lead, is warm to the touch, but squishy like flesh. It is about the size of a chess piece, and is basically indestructible. However Doub Totems once were made is knowledge lost to the First Splash, so only a limited number exist on The Mound.

The crafting Doub will then collect a pile of blubber and meat, sculpt the final body for the new Doub, and then insert the totem somewhere hidden and deep inside the new Doub.

The crafting Doub are known as the parent or parents of the new Doub, however respect is also given to the ancestor who last bore their totem. Doub born from the same totem often share similarities and certain inherited peculiarities (verbal tics, preferences, tendencies) from their ancestor, but is a unique being besides.


Gofka

Essentially, a Gofka looks like a small sentient boulder with a face carved into it.

Despite appearances, they aren't quite rocks. Their bodies are typically much less denser than most stone, such that even a decently large Gofka weighs barely more than 90 kg. They also can be chipped and damaged easily by conventional weapons, revealing an inside closer to wet fluffy kinetic sand.

They rely on using their facial muscles and stony mouths in order to move around and do things. As such, there's a stereotype about Gofka being rather slow or silly or getting stuck in odd places. This is far from a universal truth though as Gofka are a long-lived and durable people, often content to simply live at a slower pace. Through the use of mounts, spells, massive slingshots, or legendary spinning warriors they also can be as fearsome as any other species on The Mound.

Gofka do not have biological sexes and innately seem to have trouble recognising it on a biological level. As such they also do not breed, instead seeming to undergo some form of rare spontaneous generation from certain patches of stone found in The Mound. 

Despite this they do instinctually build harems. Gofka will marry any number of beings whom they are friendly with, which they will erroneously claim as "wives" no matter their gender. In that sense Gofka often act as match makers of a sort, with plenty of "sneak breeding" occurring blatantly out in the open within their harems.



Bas & Baso

Each Bas consists of a skin-covered snake-like body, about half a meter long, which ends in a hand instead of a head. These hands have five digits, including the thumb.

These Bas can join together by either intertwining their snake-like bodies, or grasping each other with their hands. Together the resulting clump of Bas forms a sort of colony being, known as a Baso.

Once joined, the Baso's shape is usually locked into whatever shape they chose. Often just a bigger snake-like form is popular, however humanoid or tauroid shapes are common too as a matter of utility. Some Baso will even have other objects threaded into their for such as armour or storage spaces. Baso normally cannot change their forms or break apart and reform.

Each Bas is part of the Baso, and the Baso is the sum of it's Bas. It's sort of like if every organ in your body was kind of it's own person, but the composites still also make up you.

Bas(o) cannot read or speak, but have an incredibly deft sense of touch such that they can still see and hear through vibration alone (as a sort of blindsight).

Under ideal conditions, with nutrition and bedrest, a Bas can divide and produce a new Bas over about four weeks. This new Bas can then be used in a few different ways:

  • Internally: The Bas is merely integrated into the existing Baso network.
  • Division: The new Bas is split off, potentially with other new Bas, in order to form a new Baso network. (This is more akin to creating a new being by splitting off aspects of yourself).
  • Joining: Two or more Baso networks may contribute Bas to create a new Baso, resulting in a new sort of hybrid Baso.
Division and Joining is very serious, as its literally giving up portions of yourself in order to create new life (to continue the metaphor, imagine chopping off some organs to make a baby). It is a very complex and intimate affair.

Two individual Bas can in theory merge to create a new Baso, but this is seen almost as a sort of death to birth new life.


This post © 2025 by Ro Pham is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

HOU: Quick Character Generator

This is just a quickie character generator for HOU, in preparation for running a game for some folks later. Thanks to Spwack for the provided quick table tools!

Eventually I intend to make a more detailed one, so please forgive any jank.

  • If your character ends up with any duplicate Features (outside of spell casting), just re-roll the whole character.
  • You may be prompted to pick something, mainly for Skills. Feel free to just think up or select something appropriate to the setting.
  • I didn't implement a random [Law] generator. Please see F16.2 for reference instead.






Saturday, September 13, 2025

[One-off Dungeon] The Tower of Ausrud

About a week or so ago, the wonderful Hilander prompted me to get back into writing up proper dungeons.

A lot more of my personal experience I feel has focused on cultivating weird situations for players to engage in while wandering about in more open pointcrawl / sandbox sort of situations, as opposed to traditional dungeon crawling. So this was a good change of pace!

Overall this dungeon was originally going to be for Cloak & Sword, but as I was writing it a little bit each night I feel like the tone drifted way too far from the chivalry and romance of the setting. (The main focus of the scenario is essentially escaping an extended hostage scenario run by nature spirits occupying an ethereal bug zapper after all).

So I rehab'd what was there into something a little more setting-agnostic, though with French accenting and a bit of implied setting of En Plus Paris (perhaps in a potential future where an English led Industrial Revolution is threatening nature?).

I also specifically wrote it for my own rule set as more of a testing / starter dungeon; which in practical terms means that there's very little numbers & dice to adapt.

As an important note: I usually write and prep content in Obsidian, with no sort of considerations for print or sharing it directly with others. When I was trying to export this out to a more shareable format, I ran into a lot of trouble as the usual cool tricks and formatting I employ all broke and weren't working.

So instead I forced it into a Google Doc to get at least the general flow & hyperlinks working, but it's definitely not formatted amazingly. Apologies!

Click here to check The Tower of Ausrud!

(unless you know me in real life since I'll probably be running it sometime soon)

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Appendix O

Different GLOG / OSR posters - This kind of is a given for everyone sharing these I guess? But I felt the need to state the obvious. I've been reading different blogs for about a decade or so at this point, made one like 7 years ago, and then have dipped in and out here and there due to being busy with life and a little nervous to put my work up and out there.

On the right I have a list of about ~100 or so blogs, probably not a complete list given some going dead / forgetting but  it's the closest I could get. Please check some out in case you haven't! Each one has some form of nugget or useful info or thought which has stuck with me, and hopefully you can find something too.


Formative Things, Growing Up

- Vietnamese Catholicism, yet also Jesus Christ Superstar (specifically only the 1973 version)

- getting called zipperhead a lot; getting into a lot of fights

- that kid who would slam his head into the pavement until someone hung out with him

- cooking with family

- fuckin' BIONICLES were the shit

- Majora's Mask (if it was not super obvious)

- Star Trek TNG & DS9 (deeply, deeply flawed but there's warmth)

- Batman TAS

- Runescape (my brother always used to drag me along to play MMOs; and I would always play them "wrong" by just wandering around and not grinding)

- Life Is Beautiful (1997)

- Doctor Who (specifically watching the Tom Baker era with my dad on crappy tapes; but when the revival happened he also got discs of that as soon as he could)

- They Might Be Giants

- Kung Fu Hustle (and other iconic or crappy martial arts movies on crappy tapes)

- MST3K (riffing is one thing, but I feel like you also have to have an appreciation for the reach and attempt by B-Movie producers; feel the heart)

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

- Philosophical debates, specifically the real stupid kind you have in cars while driving around and killing time

- The Twilight Zone

- Things people would watch at 3 AM when they can't sleep, or old books that were left lying around, or half-remembered magazines from before you were born


Circa whatever, this is just becoming a random list of things I have consumed sorry

- Oingo Boingo, Cardiacs, etc (if anyone has suggestions for bands with this kind of sound please let me know)

- Yes, Khan, Eros, lots of other weird sorta prog or adjacent music

- Disco Elysium

- Twin Peaks

- Magic: the Gathering, but specifically only Mirrodin and it's sequel block only

- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

- Fullmetal Alchemist

- Dungeon Meshi

- Dorohedoro

- Dr. McNinja and other independent webcomics

- the works of Evan Dahm

- the From Software catalog

- Into the Breach

- Coen Brothers movies

- the Fargo TV Show

- Motorman by David Ohle, and related works

- The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem

- Leonora Carrington's writings

- a lot of collections of short anthology stories; read to my wife before bed

Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Setting: The Mound Under the Gudgeon Moon

Back in 2023 I made a short sort of video-pitch for a setting linked on the blog here. In the years since I've been fleshing it out into a big bloated setting thing after work, but I've been hesitant to properly put it out there. Thanks to Hilander, Isabelle, EcksianRaven, and Archon's Court for giving me a reminder to just post and let things go how they will.


Imagine if the universe was a cup.

Falling into that cup are countless upon countless droplets.

Each of those droplets is a world, sometimes inhabited by life and sometimes not.

Eventually each of those droplets splashes and breaks apart into that cup.


Each planet follows this same trajectory, falling from the top of the universe before breaking up due to its Roche Limit and Splashing across the infinite wide flat plane of earth at the bottom of the universe.

As most planets are uninhabited and most of that plane empty, a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it.

Some planets do harbour life though, and they react to impending cataclysmic doom in different ways.

  • Some planets don't have sentient life, or aren't advanced enough to even be aware of whats going on until it's too late.
  • Others may be cursed with awareness through charts, optics, or magic, but be entirely helpless to do anything. They can only watch as their world ends.
  • Many societies and civilisations may embrace the promised Splash that will end them.
  • Some very lucky forms of life have some form of advantage to survive the Splash.
  • Even more rarely: a society will do something.
The focus of this setting is following the descendants of these Splash-survivors, eking out survival on a specific portion of the bottom of the universe known as The Mound.


The Mound is a statistical freak on the surface.

Hundreds of years ago: Ite, the Four-Fold World fell and Splashed. Thanks to the unique physiologies of the four species who lived there, all survived and went about rebuilding their society amidst the ashes of their world.

Then only a few centuries ago: Torrid, the Warring Realm, Splashed down in the exact same spot. A war-torn world home to dozens of species, only a precious few survived the Splash thanks to retooling doomsday bunkers or employing arcs meant to outlast their enemies.

Only a few decades later, a third planet fell in nearly the same spot, however this one didn't even survive entering the atmosphere. It just burned up in a bang. It's referred to as "Old Blare" or "The Haunt" colloquially.

Then came Uisge of Blue Waves- a world entirely dominated by endless blue seas. Most denizens of this world died, however some denizens from the deepest depths managed to survive the impact thanks to the water.

Then came the 5th Splash: Feerbodo, the Quiet Place, a relatively-peaceful world that came together and tried to do whatever they could to survive and preserve their culture; to mixed success. 

Thus: The Mound was formed. A vast crater with a mound of planetary debris in the center from so many ruined civilizations.



Mound society became defined by the Splashes.

The surface was a barren, inhospitable place. No light or warmth, like the surface of the moon if it got shelled into a crater every few generations. To try and wander off into the infinite cold abyss is suicide, and doesn't even guarantee another planet won't fall on your head.

Most denizens took to living underground, living in tunnels in the earth formed from layer upon layer of broken planetoid. Their societies formed in relation to building up enough resources and protection to survive complete upheaval whenever the next Splash might come, and digging through the wreckage of The Mound for whatever relics of past worlds might help them survive.

Some though, the exiled or mad sorcerers, formed civilisations on the barren surface as well.

This status quo lasted until around 70 years ago.


As The Mound braced for the next Splash, a cool blue dot rapidly growing in the sky, something miraculous happened.

It just stopped.

A glowing rock, defying every known law and just unbelievably hanging in the sky. So it was named: The Gudgeon Moon.

After a while of poking their heads out and checking for safety, the denizens of the Mound came to adjust.

Some societies look at the Moon as a threat, a bomb waiting to go off. Better to just stay down below and wait it out.

Others have moved above ground and settled on the surface, flourishing in it's cool moonlight and rapidly expanding beyond the bounds of any underground culture.


This is the age of exploration and expansion the players find themselves in- whether expanding out across the moonlit surface, reaching for the fringes of the infinite expanse, plotting to build ladders to the moon, or digging through the hidden depths of the Mound.
  • Despite the apocalyptic tones, I am shooting for a sort of hopefulness throughout it. Like this isn't a pacifist game, but I imagine combat-as-a-puzzle and violence as a desperate solution. And despite everyone living in a planetary mass burial site, it's more about building and growth as opposed to Mad Max'ing it.
  • And despite all the planets and such, the overall tone is definitely sticking more to gonzo weird swords and magic as opposed to science and technology.
  • System-wise, I originally was building everything for OUH; but actually I'm shifting it more toward HOU instead now.
  • Purposefully: this setting has no humans, dwarves, elves, etc. It's purely weirdo gonzo alien type guys. Expect lots of posts about speculative or magical biology.
    • (I heavily debated this one. Originally, I'm an all-human setting / keep things simple and relatable kind of guy in play to keep things approachable for players. But goddamn do I like writing weirdos so now my players will have to build sentient buddha statues and ghost powered mecha).
  • While there are all sorts of creatures, I am sticking to the One-of-a-Kind model for Monsters. Every one unique, with a name.
  • There's a lot of setting mysteries that I have write ups for I may allude at but not include here, just since I have players whom may read the blog.
    • What's out there on the edges of the world?
    • What's up with the Gudgeon Moon?
    • What's down below the flat plane if we dig greedily and deeply?
    • etc etc
It's something I've spent the last few years writing a few hundred documents on, and I just hope its something to somebody.

Thank you for reading.





This post © 2025 by Ro Pham is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Monday, September 1, 2025

HOU: Personal Highlights from ~98 Templates

I put out my homebrew ruleset back on 8/18, and as part of that I had a second document drawn up of Features (which are sort of analogous to Delta Templates, except instead of having set-conditions to unlock them characters are expected to find & learn them in the world as a form of loot).

A lot of these Features I straight adapted from my last ruleset- which I started in 2020, put out publicly in 2022, and have basically been constantly making small adjustments to in years since until this last radical redesign. 

Point of all this being: I have always debated how to talk about this in blog-form. 98 is a lot to talk about, the current 98 entries are already listed in full elsewhere, many general concepts like Word-Based Spellcasting I've had around for a while in some form, and many others are general ideas familiar to the blogosphere.


So: I'm just gonna do a long-ass post highlighting some favorite design thoughts. If you'd rather just read the full 98 directly, please check out the Features pdf here.