EldritchRusk

This contains some small spoilers for parts of Curse of Strahd. If you are a player in said campaign, you should not read past the "examples from my CoS game" section. TLDR: The GM and the players should agree to build the tension. Horror only works when both parties agree to it. Use the different aspects of horror. Make it scary, make it creepy, make it disgusting   A band of fools fight against the horrors of Barovia The following post is based on my own experiences with running Curse of Strahd. In addition to the write-up on building horror in the start of the adventure I would also recommend getting your hands on the Heroes of Horror supplement from 3.5e. Although the game mechanics parts of the book is not that relevant for 5e or OSR, the book has some good advice on creating horror. Scare the characters, not the players Trying to scare the players is much harder than actually scaring the characters. Most likely you are sitting around a table or playing via Roll20 (or si...

What is this?   This is a hack that will work for most OSR games. It takes the spell system from Wonders & Wickedness , but removes spell slots (or character level) and uses Hit Dice instead. I love the magic system from W&W , but I found its progression to be a bit too linear and rigid. Therefore me and Sigve from Revenant's Quill got together and created this little thing. Why use this? This system is applicable if you want a spell system that allows the caster to have greater control of how powerful each of their spells are going to be. Heads up! Using this system with a normal spell list, like the one found in OSE or Lamentation, will require a lot of tweaking of those spells   The HD Magic System No slots: Instead of spell slots, use hit dice (HD). This means that a level 1 Magic-User can cast one spell. A level 2 Magic-User can cast two spells, or one more powerful one.  Casting a spell: When casting a spell, roll at least one hit die. You may roll a numbe...