August 2025 - A Beast of a Newsletter

Once more landing in your inbox, here's Carouse, Carouse! If you're ever bored and don't know which issue to read, there's now enough to fill a d6 table. However, given that you're reading this now, you've probably already made your decision, so prepare for some delectable writing, including a pair of gameable gardens from Patchwork Paladin and the Carousers, a selection of reviews both miniature and normally sized from Clayton and Sprinting Owl, and another entry in the Rest of the F#@king Owlbear series from John Bilodeau. And of course, as always, a selection of the coolest blogposts and projects to have caught our eye since last time!

But First...

Recently, itch.io and Steam have been under heavy pressure from Collective Shout, a puritanical right-wing movement, to remove NSFW art and games under the flimsy guise of "protecting women." Their tactic is to harass payment processors until they refuse to handle transactions for certain products, and it works: itch and Steam both de-listed huge swaths of NSFW products on their stores, including, in itch's case, free products with NSFW tags. It is no coincidence that many of these games are queer art, covering topics like identity, kink, and anything broadly tagged 'Adult'. Suffice to say that queer art is the art of the people and it's worth protecting. We stand in solidarity with the artists impacted.

The best way to fight this is to apply pressure to payment processors ourselves. A few resources for this:

• stop-paypros.neocities.org
• yellat.money

As of 7/31, itch has begun the process of re-indexing free NSFW content. This is good—it means the protests are working. We hope you'll help however you can.

Roll to Carouse!

1. Lighten your coin purse at the Projects Pavilion.
2. Pilfer ideas from the Blog Bazaar.
3. Sample the delights of the Gameable Gallery.
4. Hear the raving of Reviewers Row.
5. Stroll the Columnists Colonnade.
6. Languish in the Opinion Oubliette.

Projects Pavilion ⤴

Vaults of Vaarn Second Edition Launch Party

Get excited about Vaults of Vaarn Second Edition on BackerKit - come join!

BackerKit

• What's up with Vaults 8F Vaarn? It was supposed to be 2E but they got the wrong apartment.
• Appendix N Jam
  Submissions from the cooperative include Elizabeth's mini-megadungeon The Norns' Judgement, Clayton's Invaders of Atlantis, and Hodag RPG's The Head of Luven Light-Finger. - Rowan
  

Blog Bazaar ⤴

• Gangs of Teenage Dragons Roam the Wilderness: The Implied Lifecycle of Dragons in AD&D by Blog of Forlorn Encystment
  On this blog, talk is about the lifecycles of dragons—and our games certainly need more of them. - Tobias
• Facility by A Blasted, Cratered Land
  Velexiraptor has been writing a Control / SCP / Delta Green style game on her blog and it's FANTASTIC. There's ways to generate factions in the facility, dealings with powerful artifacts, and even a full system to run the game. Check it out! - Ty
• Don't wait to create, don't wait to learn by Playful Void
  Nova shares some encouraging words to aspiring game designers, culminating in the ultimate advice of the posts' title. - Tobias
• What's In a Name? by Fallen Constellation
  Saoirse talks about how to prevent your fantasy character names from sounding silly by considering etymology in your world building. - Tobias
• The Party is a Character by This Vorpal Coil
  Rose makes the case for cohesive, high-concept parties with individual members distinguished according to common group dynamics. - Rowan
• Note-Taking in Investigation Games by Roll to Doubt
  Level up your notes as a player by using a Time Tracker and a Clue Tracker. This might not be your system, but it's a great example of making useful game notes. - Patchwork Paladin

Gameable Gallery ⤴

The Market Garden

by Patchwork Paladin

Description
Two adolescent halflings, Niniane and Callowen, have the run of this tidy shop, which is normally absolutely bursting with fresh fruit and vegetables, both common and uncommon. Today, owing to the proximity of the Great Market Cook Off, the shelves are depleted of all but the most common goods.

The party can buy basic provisions here. The Market Garden also sells Rosamurta's fine fruit cakes drenched in alcohol and wrapped for long life in waxed cloth. Honeycomb is also available.

Staff
Niniane and Callowen are Thoroughgood-Missings, daughters of Rosamurta who is sister to Thaddeus Thoroughgood of The Herb Garden. They resemble their uncle in the face somewhat, especially Callowen, who is slightly plump and smiles easily. Niniane is dark and slim and looks extremely bored with everything as she sits in the corner with a book and quill. Callowen is an excellent cook who harbors secret dreams of winning the Cook Off, while Niniane spends her spare time drawing wicked cariacatures of people she sees passing by and dreaming of the halfling boy who comes by weekly with his cart.

Adventure Hooks

1. Callowen's dreams of winning the Great Market Cook Off are thrown into disarray when the pig Jacob finds her stash of ingredients and makes a pigsty of them. Niniane offers the characters the reward of a magic pear if they will hunt through the market for the ingredients—Callowen is too well-known to go herself.
2. Niniane's cariacatures have recently been taken up anonymously by the local paper, the Market Herald, and now a powerful market trader is threatening the Herald to reveal the cariacaturist's name after Niniane depicted him in close conversation with a young woman (not his wife).
3. Rosamurta Thoroughgood-Missing's fruit cakes have developed a reputation as the perfect ration for those exploring the further reaches of the market, and demand is outstripping supply. Can the characters venture into the wild to gather the stingle-berries that are an essential ingredient?
4. The young halfling boy that wheels the cart hasn't been seen for a couple of weeks. Niniane is heartbroken. The party is hired to find him, but the trail leads to a dangerous band of thieves operating in the Lower Market.

CC-2: There Are More Gardens

In the Gardens
You walk into the courtyard. The smoke is so heavy it makes your head spin. "Another drink?" Your vision spirals. You walk into the courtyard. What day is it? Someone's throwing up in the bushes. You walk into the courtyard. A man in a mask like a rose bloom caresses his own doppelgänger. You've seen him before, you think, dead in the stairwell, five floors up. You walk into the courtyard. A sweating mass of hands grasps tight and draws you near. You should keep going- oh, what the hell. You walk into the courtyard. Someone's still throwing up in the bushes. And there's the stairwell down, like clockwork. Heaving bodies paint each step, exhausted. You check just in case, but nope: they only go down. "Another drink?" Yes, please. Down you go.

You walk into the courtyard.

There Are More Gardens is a depthcrawl module for Mark of the Odd games where the players crash a house party in a lush, infinitely recursing mansion.
Made collaboratively by the Carousing Collective & Friends.

Check out the rest of this module here!

B/X Class: Reliquarian

by Rowan

Simulacrum

The reliquarian constructs a larger-than-life simulacrum of themself out of iron, silver, gold, ceramics, and gemstones, to be kept in a safe place. They may spend up to half of their treasure building reliquaries into the simulacrum. The cost of materials required to build each reliquary are as follows:

• Head: 12,000,
• Wings: 8,000,
• Hide: 6,000,
• Heart: 4,000,
• Arms: 2,400,
• Tail: 1,200,
• Legs: 800,

Invoke Reliquary

The reliquarian can harvest monster parts and enshrine them in their reliquaries. They can invoke each reliquary once per day to achieve a corresponding effect. The examples below may guide the referee's rulings: Basilisk head: For one turn, any being that looks at you must save vs. Turn to Stone or turn to stone. If you glimpse yourself in a mirror, you must save.

• Hippogriff wings: You gain a fly speed of 360' (120') for one turn.,
• Troll hide: Your AC improves to 4 (15) for one hour. During that time, you regenerate hit points as a troll.,
• Doppleganger heart: You may assume the shape of any human-like creature for one hour. During that time, sleep and charm spells do not affect you.,
• Stone giant arms: For one turn, you can hurl rocks up to 300' to inflict 3d6 points of damage.,
• Manticore tail: Gain 24 spikes and shoot up to six per round for 1d6 damage each.,
• Giant spider legs: You can climb sheer surfaces for one hour.

A Pair of Magic Items, Powered by Moonlight

by Markus M

The Twinned Moonstones
A pair of rugged off-white rocks, each roughly the size of a cantaloupe. Once per night, if either rock is hit by moonlight, they will switch places via some mysterious form of teleportation. If anything smaller than the rock is attached to it, it will be teleported along with it.

The Edge of Moonlight
During the day, this looks like the ornate hilt of a regal blade. however, in moonlight a slender blade appears as well, materialising only in the light of the moon. The blade, when present, is unfathomably sharp, cutting through any material like it was warm butter.

Reviewers Row ⤴

Daggerheart Mini Review

by Clayton

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition and Actual Play have always had a rocky relationship. Neither plays to the other's strengths. Both seem to do best when the other is absent. For me, Daggerheart is a child of that marriage and the embodiment of its estrangement. Every design decision pleases one half of the mediation without divorcing from the other. We get combat that is theater of the mind but still crunchy. We get characters that are freeform for improv but codified in physical cards. It's hard to find reviews of Daggerheart that don't make explicit references to D&D and Critical Role, because ultimately the game is a marriage story, one that'll take years to learn if it's a happy one.

Cairn 2E Boxed Set Mini Review

by Clayton

Forget the game for a moment, because if you're already interested, it's probably something you want. Three rulebooks, a Warden's guide, and a slew of small adventures. If rules-lite fantasy rpgs are your thing, you'll like this. If you like Into the Odd but wish it was less industrial, you'll love this. What's really worth mentioning—besides the usual things—is its density. This boxed set is tiny. Small enough to sit seamlessly with the other half-letter books on your bookshelf, but robust enough to make it groan under its weight. If density were a sign of quality, Cairn 2E would be the gold (and lead) standard.

The Island of Dr. Moreau Review

by Sprinting Owl

Creation is a process that can be sanitized. Hide your rough sketches. Keep your design files internal. Show the audience only as much as has been focus tested—don’t talk about your work, preserve the mystique.

But none of this can ever remove the mess at the heart of the process.

Check out the rest of the review here!

Columnists Colonnade ⤴

The Rest of the F#@king Owlbear 3

by John Bilodeau

This is the third in a series of articles I call “The rest of the F#@king Owlbear” about making art for tabletop role playing games. This month I want to talk to TTRPG creators about drawing informative maps.

Check out the rest of this column here!

Dear Diem

Relationship Advice for People who Roll Dice

by Carp A. Diem

Welcome back, dear readers! The height of the summer sun blazes above us, but even it's heat cannot match the blazing passion I found in the letters sent in from readers like you! Take a seat, cool off a little, and join me while I offer some refreshing advice!

Dear Diem,

In my weekly 5e game, our party has arrived in a new city. The city is set on both sides of a river, and includes two large islands which are connected to each other, or to the two mainland portions of the city, by seven total bridges. The big bad is threatening to destroy us unless we find a path through the city that would cross each bridge once and only once. At session zero, our DM never warned us about unsolved problems in topology and graph theory. What do we do?

Truly yours,
Perturbed in Kanigsburg

Dear Perturbed,

Uh. Ok hang on, I have some loose paper around here somewhere. So, seven bridges, two islands, if you start from the west riverbank and go to the first island.. But wait, I probably want to keep the bridge between the islands, so I'll zig zag between the riverbank first... Uhm. Hmm. Ok, reset, use the north-most bridge to move from the west to east riverbanks, take the first bridge to island 1 via island 2, go back onto island one- no wait that's a dead end too. This is really frustrating, actually hang on. Start from North-most bridge going east- no that's the same problem. UGH. There has to be a way to solve this, you're playing a baby game like Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition, for christ's sak-

You're playing Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition. Why on earth are you bothering to solve the puzzle, just roll high on Perception.

Equally Perturbed, but at YOU,
Diem

Dear Diem,

I was told that one of the best ways to improve your GMing is to pull from media you love. However, after I ran an adventure based on one of my favorite books, my players absolutely revolted. Now I can't even say the word "Basement" without them looking at me funny. How do I find suitable material for their...less refined palate?

-Baffled Bibliophile

Dear Baffled,

Clearly, you've not stocked your table with enough Fellow Freaks (non-derogatory) for the topics you wish to engage with. A strong session Zero as well as multiple check ins across play sessions is always a must to make sure everyone involved remains engaged and comfortable with what happens at the table. The lack of enthusiasm for your Basement adventure sounds like a disconnect between your preferred entertainment and theirs. Try asking outright what sorts of media they enjoy, and what about those works excite them! You might find all new things to try that you wouldn't have otherwise!

It's a bit weird that Basements are the line too far, though. You can put a lot in a basement! Canned Goods. Model Trains. Man-caves with a complete Nintendo 64 collection. The possibilities are endless, really. It's a shame your table finds themselves limited- Wait. I am receiving a firm and visibly concerned head shake from my Editor. I shall have to end this reply early to ask what he's on about!

Baffingly Yours,
Diem

As always, dear readers, remember that all relationships require mutual respect and communication. Until we meet again, Carpe Diem!

Letter Submissions may be sent care of carousingcollective [at] proton [dot] me, titled "Dear Diem." Letters may be edited for space and anonymity.

Opinion Oubliette ⤴

Dinkie's Droppings 4

We are all familiar with David “Dinkie” Rizzle. One of the forgotten luminaries of the early TSR days, his own work on Dungeons and Dragons was discarded (allegedly after using the first draft of Holmes Basic as rolling papers) and he faded into obscurity. However, I was able to convince him to join Carouse, Carouse!, and tell us stories about the olden days and offer advice to us modern gamers.

Tax season will soon be upon the Rizzle household, and as my wife and I endeavour to get our affairs in a row and our ducks in order, I cannot help but think back to the classic Navein campaign of yesteryore. As we all knew then, Dungeons and Dragons was a game about accumulating resources and expending them efficiently (not like this “Hope and Fear” nonsense coming out in the newest edition), and the greatest resource of all was treasure.

Treasure, like most currencies, was fungible relative to the goods and services any adventurer required to sustain themselves on expeditions into the dungeon: torches, rations, rope, heavy cavalry, wenches (or knaves, as the case may be), castles, and potions. Most importantly of all however, treasure also became equivalent to eXperience Points, and was thus a one-way monorail to both political and personal power. As my players often wanted to play, and play smartly, they rapidly began to accumulate power and prestige. This could not stand, and so I had the Count of Navein impose a harsh tax on all yields gained by adventuring, declaring it to be ignoble and corrupt. On the whole, this had the desired effect of reducing gains and forcing wiser player investment. However, one character in particular took offense to this.

Begal the Cleric (of Begal’s Bathing Salts fame) had been, up to this point, rather unremarkable. A proud worshipper of Jupiter, he had dutifully saved the party after their battle with a wight dragon, and as he was escorting their carcasses to the surface, he began to resent just how much of what he had earned was going to become so much vapor, lost in the wind. So he did what so many like-minded tomb robbers have done in the history of our great nation: he incorporated.

The church of Jupiter Fiducius rapidly gained power throughout the city, due to our many one-on-one sessions, until Begal was able to blackmail the city council into giving him the contract for guarding the entrances and exits to the dungeon. From there, he levied tariffs as he saw fit, and pocketed a nice net profit for himself. However, obviously this could not stand either, and so I created a rival for Begal; Tedpasd , Sheriff and Paladin of Justice. Pledging to be tough on large organizations, he soon set the law on the church, leading to the greatest battle since Normandy. Churchmembers fought the guard in the streets, and with no one left to guard the dungeon many simply chose to continue to loot from there whatever they could before order was restored.

When all was said and done, Tedpasd was dead and broken, and Begal had proven himself the undisputed master of the city of Ebonwing. However, I am a clever DM, and I had one last trick up my sleeve, for I revealed that Begal had all along been worshipping not Jupiter, but Mammon, the lord of greed. To reward him for his faithful service, Mammon turned Begal into a dragon, the better to rule over his new city. And so began the era of the Dracocracy in Navein, but that is a story for another time.

Begal’s player stopped showing up to the game after that, despite me generously offering to let him make a new character, and I can only assume he spreads the joy of our campaign to other tables wherever he goes.

I hope this may serve as a lesson for all: no matter how much temptation there may be to evade him, like that grim reaper of old, the tax man always gets his due.