Swords Against Madness

Miria & Kale confront Silas, the Guardian of the Underworld over the fate of the souls of Olan, Garland, Edryk, Rayya, Nala, and Raxon. In doing so they must make a terrible decision.

This episode showcases the incredible versatility of Mythic Game Master Emulator more than any previous episode ever has. Watch as I use it to build up complex mythology and magic for my setting!

Cast

This episode featured Craig Husebow as Silas Underwood

Music in this Episode

From the Free Music Alliance:

In space, forces move against Miria, and an old friend falls into peril…

This episode was created entirely in response to a prompt from the Mythic Game Master Emulator and introduces two new characters.

Just in time for Halloween, this episode is one of the darkest in the series. If you are uncomfortable with psychological torture or mind control, this episode might be very uncomfortable.

Cast

The Assassin was played by Nola Dorren-Rideout

Music in this Episode

From the Free Music Alliance:

Fear. Isolation. Discover. This is Red Bay

Red Bay is an anthology of found footage horror stories by Brian Rideout and Jon Cohen made using the Red Bay writing tool by Jon Cohen.

Red Bay is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is definitely advised.

Visit our website at rebday.media

Say hello on Bluesky @RedBayPod

And try out the tool for yourself on DriveThruRPG

Miria and Kale navigate the City of the Dead, Duat-Nar hoping to find their lost companions. They find much more than they bargained for, including blood, redemption, and strange secrets.

This Episode was Swords & Wizardry at its most entertaining for me, with Mythic GME throwing curveballs every few minutes.

I feature a custom monster inspired by the classic D&D monster, the Yellow Musk Creeper.

Dusking Flower

Dusking Flower: HD: 2+2; AC: 8 [12]; Att: tendril (1d4 + grab); SV: 16; Special: hypnotic polled, strangle; MV: 6; AL: Neutrality; ML: 8; No. Appearing: 1d4; CL/XP: 4/

...

Miria and Kale tell stories to fight off the numbing effects of the land of the dead as they search for one of the Demenses where the recently passed await judgement. In a flashback, Silas, Tom, and Tina delve one of Yanghu’s dungeons seeking a way home.

WARNING: This episode has lots of graphic violence. Even more graphic than usual for this podcast. It includes gory sounds and references to toxins and paralysis. Also, mild sexual innuendo.

Another round with the Carrion Crawler in this episode!

Miria and Kale struggle against subtle an...

A summary of Episodes 31-39

Swords Against Madness episode 40 is a summary of the plot from episodes 31 through 39. An opportunity to catch up on the plot or just refresh your memory. It adds nothing to the main plot-line.

Music in this Episode

From the Free Music Alliance:

From Pixabay:

California 1974: four friends make a strange discovery while star-gazing that kicks off a strange journey across space and time that intersects with Miria’s own journey.

The story of three teens in San Benito County, California that discover a meteor that drags them across time & space.

This is the origin story of Tom Foreman, creator of the wizard van, and his allies Cyrus and Tina.

This episode includes references to or oblique depictions of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.

The World of Xen

Interested in my setting bible for Xe...

Crossing the Ashlands of Muspellsheim, Miria and Kale face a being far beyond their ability to fight...

Voice Talent:
Jon Cohen plays The All-Knowing in this Episode.

Music on this Episode:

From the Free Music Alliance:
"King Edward" by Mr. Smith a CC-BY song released through the FMA

From Pixabay:
"Acidcore" by Jumping Bunny
"Country Rock" by litesaturation
"Orchestral Nebula" by Diogodelassivlavsmores
"Jack the Lumberer" by Alexander Nakarada
"Slabfall" by Vlad Annekov
"Battle Metal" by Top_Sue
"Awesome Pink Floydish Guitar Riff"...

Miria and Kale begin a perilous journey through Ice, Fire, and Eternal skies to rescue their fallen friends.

Miria goes deep within her mind to commune with the All-Knowing and prepare herself for a dangerous journey.

We turn our attention to Yanghu as he hunts for those who had meddled with his Gorum and Carver tech.

This session was played extemporaneously using Swords & Wizardry and the Mythic Game Master Emulator.

Sometimes you just want to play the bad guys for a bit, and figure out what the heroes are really up against.

The Master

The Master was once a gifted and driven chirurgeon called Haidran. His failure to save South Nar from the purple plague drove him halfway to madness. He sought out the ability to perfect...

Edryk, Miria, and Kale face a terrifying onslaught on the dismal beaches of Abzû.

This game sues the crocodile stats from Swords & Wizardry, It also delves pretty deep into the Dungeons & Dragons theory of the Soul that was made central to the concept of planar travel in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons starting later in the 1st edition and refined in the Planescape setting.

I also wanted to share the Enuma Elish, if you want to read some ancient Mesopotamian myth.

Miria, Kale, & Edryk cross the shimmering plane of Amber, and then into the darkness of Abzû, beset on all sides by monsters and mysteries.

This episode includes a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster: the Aurumvorax, reproduced here based on the stats in the AD&D2e Monstrous Manual for Swords & Wizardry.

I did take liberties with the speed of the aurumvorax to make it more of a threat and more weasel-like.

Aurumvorax

The Aurumvorax or gold-gorger is an eight-legged weasel-like creature about 12′ long. It can burrow through solid rock. The aurumvorax eats gol...

Miria contemplates her past as she, Edryk, and Kale cross the Divine Seed of Amber, a place of beauty, perfection, and cruelty.

This episode draws its inspiration from the setting of the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny, one of the top six inspirations for Dungeons & Dragons listed in AD&D‘s Appendix N.

This scifi-dense story is mostly told in flashback. Much of my Scifi elements of my campaign are played using Cepheus Deluxe and White Star: Swords & Wizardry in Space, Galaxy Edition.

I also mention a classic D&D monster, the Fl...

Miria, Edryk, Kale, The All-Knowing, and the Squid set sail across the Astral plane and discover that it is anything but empty.

This episode uses a mix of planar travel rules found in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons 3.5e, and the D&D3.5e Planar Handbook, as the players travel across the Astral Plane.

It also features a monster from Dungeons & Dragons3.5e: The Elsewhale.

Elsewhale

Elsewhale: HD: 16; AC: 6 [13]; Att: bite (4d8); SV: 4; Special: plane shift, adaptation, telepathy; MV: swimming 18, flying 18; AL: Neutrality; ML: 9; No. Appearing: 1d3; CL/XP: 20/2,4,400

...

A summary of Episodes 21-29.

Swords Against Madness episode 30 is a summary of the plot from episodes 21 through 29. An opportunity to catch up on the plot or just refresh your memory. It adds nothing to the main plot-line.

Cast

This episode includes performances by:

Music in this Episode

From the Free Music Alliance:

This is a special bonus episode of Swords Against Madness featuring my new TTRPG, Undeadwood: Weird West RPG. Follow the Lost Soul Carson Swift, as he tries to help a bounty hunter track down a stolen item, only to be dragged into a battle between a powerful land-owner and a dark cult of alien mystics.

This episode is played using my Undeadwood: Weird West TTRPG system, and its dark, American folklore-enriched setting of Wonkatonkwa County.

The game is available on DriveThruRPG.

You can also learn more about it through the game development podcast...

Miria, Edryk, and Kale finally reach the place where the All-Knowing believes there is a means to travel to the planes. The object they discover is far stranger than anything they could have imagined.

In this session I reference the amazing role-playing game Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG from Goodman Games. DCC catches the strange psychedelic vibe of the books that inspired D&D – and Swords Against Madness – better than any other game on the market.

It also borrows some rules for planar travel and plane shifting from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition to f...

The party may have destroyed the Dread Silkworm, a half-giant-caterpillar-half-god monster… but there are still more creatures devouring the juju garden, and a mission to fulfill.

This episode opens with rounds 8-14 of a brutal gruelling battle! The Dread Silkworm may have fallen, but it is far from the only threat that the party was facing!

This is an AI-free episode of Swords Against Madness.

Cast

This episode includes performances by:

Music in this Episode

From the Free Music Alliance:

The party attempts to help the Nilkin clear the Ravenous Caterpillars from their sacred garden, only to find the threat is much greater than anyone anticipated.

Mythic Game Master Emulator throws a number of crazy curve-balls at the PCs this session, showing just how wild and unpredictable it can make a game become…

…Especially when you are willing to truly let your imagination run wild with the prompts it creates.

This is the first fully AI free episode of Swords Against Madness.

Cast

This episode includes performances by:

The Party joins the mysterious wild halflings, the Nilkin, in their village in hopes that the local shaman might be able to help them find the planar travel device. The Nilkin are not as firendly as they might seem, and have a dangerous task that needs doing.

This episode of Swords Against Madness includes a discussion of the Dungeons & Dragons module Hot Springs Island by Jacob Hurst et al. at Swordfish Islands.

This age-of-sail tropical island hexcrawl has set the standard for me for adventure design and I used many of its monsters and encounters...

Miria, Edryk, Raxon, Berle, & Kale brave the untamed norther jungles of Nar, to find that the wilderness itself seems to hunger for them…

This episode features a reinterpretation of the Vine Horror from the epic Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG module Sailors on the Starless Sea, a legendary module that helped define DCCRPG and secure it as the most popular Old-School RPG around.

It also features my Swords & Wizardry adaptation of the Kuji Bird from the equally epic (and edition agnostic) D&D module Hot Springs Island.

Creatures in this Episode

Strangling Vi...

With the help of the All-Knowing, Miria delves into the terrors of Haalu’s mind to learn more about the cruel and enigmatic Master.

This episode includes an encounter with a monster that in Swords and Wizardry is referred to as a Carrion Worm. Other pseudonyms have included the Carcass Crawler, Corpse Worm, and Tentacled Horror, but they all refer to one classic and horrifying Dungeons & Dragons monster: The Carrion Crawler.

The Carrion crawler gets multiple attacks around, each doing only 1hp, but each requiring a save or the unfortunate character becomes paralyzed. On a ba...

The Miria, Edryk, Berle, Raxon, and Kale have their showdown with Haalu; we explore a piece of Edryk’s past, where it crosses with doctor Haidran.

This episode includes my quick and dirty rules for fighting manoeuvres in OSR games:

In the case of grappling, the target cannot move or use a weapon bigger than a dagger until they make a save to break free,

If they cannot break free th...

The party makes a narrow escape. Miria, Edryk, Raxon, Berle, and Kale secretly prepare for treachery.

This episode includes an encounter with a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster that isn’t included in Swords & Wizardry: the Phase Spider. The version I used was from one of my all-time favourite D&D resources, the AD&D2e Monstrous Manual. With a massive selection of Monsters from the first 30 years of D&D from the true classics to the extremely bizarre with amazing art, including David A. Trampier and Tony Di’Terlizzi!

Miria and Edryk recruit new followers and head into the jungle, but discover that one of their own party is plotting against the rest…

Episode 21 begins a fresh hex crawl with 3 additional PCs:

Kale uses a simplified half-elf for Swords and wizardry.

The party has also hired Haalu, who will be treated as a Hireling.

Half-Elf

You hare a mixture of human and elf. You see twice as far in the dark as a human. You ga...

A summary of Episodes 11-19.

Swords Against Madness episode 20 is a summary of the plot from episodes 11 through 19. An opportunity to catch up on the plot or just refresh your memory. It adds nothing to the main plot-line.

Come and find your next favourite solo rpg semi-actual-play podcast on soloroleplayersnetwork.com

Miria & Edryk return to Nar with the All-Knowing and another pile of treasure. The All-Knowing reveals a path forward, but will the people of Nar trust Miria enough to risk more lives to help her?

Apologies for the delay! This episode is coming out 1 week late due to extreme illness.

In this Episode, Miria & Edryk both return safely to the village of Nar with a pile of treasure, enough for them both to gain a level. I am borrowing the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons method of handling levelling up for Magic-users: PCs can pick one spell...

Miria and Edryk face a terrifying trap and life-altering choices push on to the deepest chambers of the Fane of the All-Knowing.

In this episode Miria and Edryk narrowly escape a trap that borrows its inspiration from the AD&D2e spell Maximillian’s Stony Grasp, and the D&D3e spell Stone Fist that evolved from it. I discuss spells – and getting them wrong in the episode.

Warning: Spoilers ahead

Miria and Edryk encounter the being known as the All-Knowing, which is an extradimensional intelligence.

The voice of the All-knowing is p...

While Miria & Edryk face a deadly trap, The Master & his acolyte Halu conspire to murder Miria, and Yanghu extracts a bloody revenge on the crew of the pirate ship Xur.

This epsiode uses a ship layout diagram from Cepheus Deluxe as its dungeon map, but is played entirely with Swords 7 Wizardry. It focuses primarily on the activity of the campaign’s villains. It includes several encounters with human bandits, soldiers, and sergeants at arms as described in Swords & Wizardry.

Yanghu

Yanghu is a very old and powerful Ogre Mage who has been a ca...

Note: Due to an error, this entry originally pointed to episode 14. This has been fixed and the correct episode should now play.

In the aftermath of the battle in orbit over Orbos, space pirate comb the hulk of the Ko-Dan for treasure. Miria and Edryk push deeper into the Fane of the All-Knowing, and Miria reminisces about her past.

This episode continues to use material from Cepheus Deluxe, a modern remake of the 1977 Scifi RPG Traveller, along with Swords & Wizardry to create a classic, 1977 D&D experience.

This session used space travel mechanics...

As Miria, Edryk, and Nala press deeper into the trap-laden Fane of the All-Knowing, the Ogre-Mage crime-lord Yanghu deals with a vicious sneak attack on his starship.

This adventure mixes classic RPGs, using Swords & Wizardry to simulate D&D as it was played in 1977, along with scenes from Cepheus Deluxe, a modern re-imagining of the 1977 version of the classic Sci-Fi TTRPG Traveller.

Fair warning: This episode includes some mild profanity that, while within the limits of the 1980s PG limit, is worth mentioning.

In this episode I handled outer space conflict using the...

Miria, Rayya, Nala, and Edryk search for their lost companion and the mysterious all knowing in a dungeon full of strange traps, mechanical constructs and deadly illusions. In space, a conflict mounts between the Trassi syndicate and a treacherous business partner.

This episode includes logic puzzles, deadly traps, and a custom monster featured in the show notes. It also has the terrible lethality of Old D&D on full display.

In this episode the party faces a deadly magical foe called the Arcane Guardian.

The Arcane Guardian

Miria, Rayya, Nala, Garland, and Edryk enter the Fane of the All-Knowing: a labyrinth of traps, illusions, and deadly guardians. Nothing in their path is what they seem. Especially when the traps force the group apart.

This episode discusses solo gaming tools that I use at length, and includes the classic D&D monster, the Piercer, lightly reskinned to fit the dungeon theme.

Solo Adventure Gaming Tools

I created this dungeon using the AD&D Random Dungeon Generator from Donjon.bin.sh; which creates a complete dungeon based on your specifications and to...

Miria meets one new ally and sets out to fulfill the Prophecy and wake the All-Knowing, taking to flight in her newly acquired spaceship with a team of new allies.

A new dungeon crawl begins in this episode!

This episode features a classic low-level D&D monster, and shows off an equally classic magic item!

Miria gathers new allies, and tries to buy time as the radiation begins to consume her. Rayya and Miria draw up plans for war. Two new allies join the party, each separately seeking ways to do penance.

This episode includes some much-needed downtime where Miria recruits some new party members and seeks medical attention for her radiation poisoning. It includes some detailed notes on how I use the Mythic Game Master Emulator.

Undeadwood Weird West RPG: Dead Man’s Dice Preview Version is my complete and fully playable Western fantasy TTRPG. Th

A summary of the first 10 episodes of Swords Against Madness.

Miria, a space-faring smuggler crash-lands on the world of Orbus, near the Island of Nar. Nar is a poor former colony of a failed Oligarchy full of conflict between its two religions, and is plagued by seeming indestructible monsters.

Miria steps right into the conflict by giving them the holy words she guessed had been engineered into the Island’s older faith by star-faring criminals, and thanks to horrible radiation poisoning, finds herself racing against time to fulfill a prophecy, hunt down an old space pi...

Miria, Olan, & Rayya make a desperate ploy not just to escape Yanghu’s showroom, but to escape in style… but the Gorum are still hunting, and the lizard-man starfighter pilot Sshosk is still between them and freedom.

This episode features transcripts thanks to the openVINO tool kit for Audacity!

The Weapons I’m Using

I have created a set of simple science fiction weapons that the Trassi Syndicate use based on the material in the various Sci-Fi games I have used to inspire the game’s Sci-Fi rules. The prices represent the fact that the...

Miria, Rayya, & Olan make a break for freedom as the carnage continues in Yanghu’s Showroom.

The chaos continues in one of the most insanely busy dungeon crawls in which I have ever been either the player or the GM. It includes multiple NPC villains, Orcs, Kobolds, Lizard-Men, as well as two custom monsters found in the SvM Bestiary.

The Dungeon Map

Where to Get Scifi Rules for Swords & Wizardry

For the purposes of creating science fiction adventures in Swords & Wizardry, I will be borrowing some material from White Star: Swords & Wi...

Rayya and Kalmek clash as the Gorum awake and swarm the party from within the facility, while Trassi soldiers hunt them from without, and Mormont makes a desperate escape attempt.

This episode includes custom monsters found in the Bestiary page of the SvM homepage, as well as the villains Kalmek, Yanghu, and Mormont, and includes my custom hacking rules below.

The Dungeon Map

This adventure takes place in Yanghu’s Gorum Showroom, described here:

Computer Hacking

I have adapted rules for computer hacking from White Star: Swords and Wizardry in...