r/TheOSR

Hey Townies. I have been thinking back to that lauded OSR module The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford and the lore for where the wyrm came from and I think I recall it was a dwarf corrupted by greed. Really liked this idea that dragons (wyrms) could have once been humans (or demi humans in this case) who succumbed to strong negative emotions and been associated with some sort of fall from grace or tragedy.

In fact this way of wyrms being created makes more sense to me as Dolmenwood wyrms are all very solitary, jealous, and confrontational; making mating or even searching for a mate seem unlikely. So instead of a regular reproductive cycle I thought perhaps wyrms come about from extreme and extraordinary corruption that only happens once in a genration. Perhaps it's a willing transformation, akin to lich-dom (requiring a pact with dark forces or occult transgressions of some form).

Some origins for wyrms could be :
Black Wyrms (Melancholic) - committing a great treachery (e.g. Lord Soth)
Bile Wyrms (Choleric) - corrupted by wrath leading to a massacre (e.g. Iago)
Phlem Wyrms (Phlegmatic) - nihilismunchecked that consumed an individual (e.g. ??)
Blood Wyrms (Sanguine)- passion that became an obsession (e.g. The Vampire Strahd Von Zarovitch)

These origins could also tie into each wyrms specific weakness as it reminded them of their human past?

Eager to hear your thoughts, I kinda thought this was cool and differentiates wyrms even more (they are already amazing in DW) from standard 'D&D' Dragons making them more mysterious

Today on the channel I am talking about the Druid Class in AD&D and how some people mistake the class as a Nature Cleric.

The AD&D Druid Was Never Just a Nature Cleric

I am happy to announce the release of Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms for details see my blog post.

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2026/04/into-majestic-fantasy-realms-northern.html

https://preview.redd.it/vtqyrpk1leyg1.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b1ca92f8ea3330177dd4fc49501540de09648d5

As work on the first issue of my zine, Monster Closet, draws near to completion, I thought I would share some concepts I had for adventures in upcoming issues so anyone thinking of sending in submissions would have an idea what kind of themes I'm looking for (though of course feel free to send in any crazy idea you have and I'll figure out something to use it for). I have only come up with titles for some of these, and some of them I might decide to make standalone adventures instead of part of the zine. For those of you who haven't followed this project, Monster Closet features an adventure in each issue which makes use of monsters, magic items, spells, races, classes, and other rules additions submitted by readers. If you are interested in sending in submissions, you can direct message me or email me at monsterclosetzine@yahoo.com.

Adventure Ideas:

• Murdering Ghost: A pastiche of The Son of Frankenstein, in which a player character inherits a barony but upon arrival finds the villagers hostile due to the character's predecessor having created a flesh golem which went on a rampage. Meanwhile, mysterious murders are being carried out throughout the barony and agents of some dark power are scheming to steal the previous baron's notes from the players so they can build their own golem.
• An adventure set in a temple of Tiamat hidden in a dragon graveyard.
• Empire of Nightmares: All across the city people are falling into a sleep they cannot be roused from. Nightmare creatures have found a way to expand their reach beyond a single mind, with each person affected by the sleeping curse adding territory and power to the creatures. The players must venture into the nightmare realm to stop the threat once and for all.
• It's In the Walls: An old manor house is plagued by strange occurrences. The players investigate and discover that a figure from the owner's past he thought long dead has created a surreal pocket dimension within the house's walls from which to plot revenge on him and his entire family.
• Seven Days in the Screaming City: A planetar has been sent by the gods to destroy the Screaming City, a horrific theocratic dictatorship run by an insane cleric who has anyone who defies his will transformed into living fleshy architecture to deny them the possibility of rest in the afterlife, as he holds the gods themselves to be too merciful. The players have seven days to do what they want in the city before its destruction, whether that be attempting to save a handful of its citizens or merely loot the place, but getting out in time isn't as easy as getting in.
• The Shopping Mall of the Damned: A more comedic adventure. The players stumble across the subterranean Shopping Mall of the Damned, a marketplace of all kinds of evil wares frequented by fiends and monsters of all types run by the lower planar Ninefold Nexus Corporation.
• A murder mystery whose suspects have all been placed in a magical sleep, forcing players to piece together the mystery by delving Pyschonauts-style into each suspect's subconscious and deciphering the symbolism therein while trying not to get killed by the surreal inhabitants of these dream worlds.
• The players find a portal to a demiplane containing a vast, Escher-esque city hanging over a bottomless abyss. Warring tribes of builders fight a religious war over the correct interpretation of the blueprints and waiting for the day the building inspectors will come to reward them, not knowing they are the descendants of workers contracted by an infernal corporation which never intended to uphold its end of the bargain as it only started the project as a write-off for Hell's tax code!
• A strange ship without any visible crew pulls into port. Investigating it reveals it to be merely a piece of a much larger vessel sailing a sea between worlds and occasionally partially intersecting with them. The inside is a non-Euclidean maze of decks and holds, populated by lost mariners from across the multiverse, some rooms even being miniature oceans with their own ships sailing on them within the ship.
• A pastiche of the film version of Masque of the Red Death starring Vincent Price.
• The Frozen Cathedral: An adventure in a temple of Countess Inald, mad goddess of Law who wishes to freeze the multiverse.