Swords Against Madness

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...

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 Gami...

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...

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...

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...

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 &...

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...

Rayya struggles under Mormont’s mind control as he debates to which faction he wants to sell out Miria. An unfortunate communication and a careless intruder cause danger to awaken on every side. Making escape seem increasingly more perilous by the second. This episode begins a fast and furious dungeon crawl designed using the Five-Room Dungeon method , and includes another custom moster to f...

Rayya, Olan, & Miria fight for their life against giant centipedes, we learn about Rayya’s history with the church, the PCs are stalked by a man with a grudge, and find their way barred by an enemy who declares Miria and all she stands for Heresy . This episode features a new NPC villain that I rolled up using the same character statistics as a Player Character. Mormont Mormont is an apo...

Miria finishes the task of slaying the Gorum, and struggles with the guilt of destroying helpless foes. As she struggles with her thoughts she makes a bond with a psisquid, and is then interrupted by a call from an old enemy. In this episode we discuss the use of alignment in OD&D and Swords & Wizardry and why it matters. We also continue to feature the Gorum, shared in the Bestiary sectio...

Rayya, Olan, and Miria set out to acquire a magic dagger from a local miser to use against the immortal space barbarians known as the Gorum. This drags Miria into the religious cold war that runs through the Island’s culture. This episode includes a brief battle using the deadly and fast grappling rules from Swords & Wizardry , and I opt to use the more granular B/X Morale Rules. Much of...

Miria awakens in a hut at the edge of the ruined village, covered in blisters, and discoveres that she may well be living on borrowed time, and so is the A.I. on her ship, The Empyreal’s Coin. As a madman plots her death, she stands before the council of the village to tell them a terrible truth about their beliefs… In this Episode, we establish some custom rules for radiation poisonin...

Miria, a smuggler awakes next to her sinking starship on a strange world, alone, with holes in her memories, and only the clothes on her back and her wrist computer. If she’s going to survive, she is going to need to find a way past the strange alien cephalopods circling her vessel like hungry sharks… Episode 1 of the podcast introduces us to Miria at level 1, and has her survive the c...