Excellence from the Blogosphere (May-June)

Below you may find a list of greatness that the blogosphere (particularly of the OSR side) has produced lately (chiefly in May and June). It is nowhere near complete - I'm definitely going monthly with this, otherwise I won't be able to keep up.

• Wizzzargh from DMiurgy shared further playtest notes of a hexcrawl, and a detailed cosmology of the Sunset Realm campaign setting, along with a setting-specific calendar (something that more campaign settings should have, IMHO!).
• Dreaming Dragonslayer describes an open table Maze Rat campaign comprised of two distinct phases each session (a city phase and a wilderness phase); all relevant posts are available on the blog's incomplete index. You might also be interested in the author's other open table campaign pitches.
• Gundobad talked of a WIP bronze age setting, tentatively called Brazen Princes: here's an overview, and here are thoughts on background tables and funerals.
• Yami Bakura from Remixes and Revelations has a very good collection of tables to generate Sorcerer-Kings, as well as Households of Handsome Men (which are the elf-equivalents in the author's campaign). Over here, minions of dark powers and a hack of fighters for GLOG. Don't forget to check out the backlog; the posts on Eldritch Americana and adapting Apocalypse Prevention Inc. to D&D have some serious potential.
• Andy of Swords and Storytellers revealed an interesting project called The Lighthouse at the Threshold with the premise that a town in Michigan stands on the verge of two worlds. A custom system is being built: here you can read about the ability scores and the core mechanics.
• Bob Something of The Amateur Dungeoneers shared a list of YouTube channels that provide useful information for worldbuilding. Bob also continued discussing inhabitants of an urban fantasy setting (this time: demons and the undead). You may also want to keep an eye on Tellus, a fantasy setting (partially) inspired by JRPG titles.
• Monsieur Le Battlier from The Bottomless Sarcophagus wrote about locations and creatures in the Thawing Kingdom setting (here you may find an incomplete index of the blog). This, unrelated, take on elven parthenogenesis I found very stimulating and utterly creepy. There's also a second post, providing an alternative way of reproduction by the, ahem, traditional means. Here are also some diseases that may afflict these beautiful and tragic creatures. Do yourself a favour and check out this take on The Jungle as well.
• D. G. Chapman of The Graverobber's Guide posted a proper English weather table.
• Jason Vey from The Wasted Lands posted a hilarious piece about toxic fandoms.
• Inheart of Iron & Ink talked about royal forests and how majesty shapes their inhabitants. A rules variation of LotFP + Yoon-Suin, tentatively titled Lamentations of the Purple Princess, is also shared piece by piece: rules summary, character generation, and classes - so far.
• ravencrowking discusses telegraphing traps by analysing a published adventure of his own design.
• Brendan of Necropraxis here shares an interesting take on level drain.
• Meridian Miller of Wyrdspeak has a simple system for miracles (and three sample deities), suitable for campaigns without a dedicated cleric class. But there are other cool things as well, like this article on how to add races to Into the Odd (with five example races), how to use D6s to map small dungeons quickly, and an introduction to the author's homebrew setting, the Ashen Age and rules.
• GraphitePrime of (surprise!) Graphite Prime here talks about clerics attaining sainthood and, eventually, ascension.
• Dan from Throne of Salt lists a bunch of items/enemies for a roguelite-inspired pointcrawl. Also a PDF of Discape.
• Cackleharm from The Manse recently presented a really interesting take on spell components.
• Nick S. from Down in the Chthonic Deeps talks about rumours in his sandbox/megadungeon campaign, going into detail based on actual experiences and possible solutions. From the same campaign, here are the (unformatted) downtime rules.
• Martin O of Goodberry Monthly shared some Abjuration spells (a continuation of a series; links in the post), as well as this d30 table of Who's waiting just outside the dungeon door?
• Here's a shout-out for Ian Yusem from Uncanny Spheres talking about tourists and profiteers. Stats are for Troika! (so are these two batches of backgrounds from last year).
• waywardwayfarer from The Dragon's Flagon talks about search checks.
• Type1Ninja of Two Goblins in a Trenchcoat talks about Hellwalkers, a hexcrawl sandbox campaign.
• Daniel James Hanley from Engine of Oracles has shared a set of random tables to generate 18th century villages for a gothic sandbox. But if you want classic fantasy, then classic fantasy you shall have. Further posts on the setting can be found in the Panzoasia category (check out these maps!).
• noisms here shared 8 sample hex locations for the Fixed World setting. Also, here's some historical slang.
• Joe Fatula of Signs in the Wilderness compiled a short list of reference material pertaining to wilderness adventures.
• Evan from In Places Deep posted a list of rumours/hooks for the Wilderlands (CSIO in particular).
• Joseph Manola of Against The Wicked City talks about his takeaways from his long-running B/X campaign (here's a campaign map with explanations). Here's an unrelated but cool d100 encounters with onrushing modernity table.
• T AKW of Dreams and Fevers shared 20 exquisite organs (i.e. fantasy bioware), as well as an investigative folklore game, Beyond the Fence, Below the Grave.
• Velexiraptor from A Blasted, Cratered Land shared reconstructed (character brought back to life crafted from various materials), a psion class for GLOG, and rules for cybernetics.
• JasonT of Pretendo shared some preliminary notes on a Knave/Numenera hack.
• Christopher Willett started a blog to detail a megadungeon, the eponymous Temple of the Bat-Faced God.
• Michael Kennedy from Sheep and Sorcery here discusses the functions of a player character. For people interested in less theory, here's a very Moorcockian magic system.
• John B of The Retired Adventurer summarised a good way to design NPCs with regards to usability at the table.
• Malcolm Svensson from Tales of Scheherazade (following the footsteps of Joseph Manola) wrote up 30 encounters and 2 mini-dungeons based on a song's lyrics.
• Anne of DIY & Dragons posted part 3 in her series on resource management (here are part 1 and part 2, for reference), along with a follow up post. There's also a short post about hallways and dungeon maps that sparked a lively discussion. Another short post here is concerned with gridcrawl and pointcrawl overland maps. Here's a detailed look at investigations (specifically written for DCC but thought-provoking for other systems as well), and finally a list of links to lists of DCC occupations.
• Daniel Dean of Basic Red posted an interesting alternate take on HP (note that it uses a metacurrency).
• Cavegirl released a new game: Deep Morphean Transmissions.
• Matt Halton from I Don't Remember That Move shared some simple but solid background-generating tables from an upcoming publication.
• Lungfungus from Melancholies and Mirth talks about description procedures, streamlined weapons and armour rules (particularly suitable for the "city-state/king arthur/vikingr/mycenean greece/sengoku japan/conan the barbarian" type of settings), and jaquaying the dungeon (which, of course, reminded me of Melan's old article). Also, here's some random encounter tables that look cool.
• Skerples of Coins & Scrolls released Magical Murder Mansion.
• Talysman from The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms links to a few articles that summarise his views of ability checks (and to JB's rant that inspired the series).
• Here you can find a bunch of archived G+ community posts and comments.
• ktrey from d4 Caltrops shared a few critters (following his "just use goblins" principle): storkfolk, masked ones, and batrachians. There's also a giant table of 300 smells and scents.
• Here's the OSRIC wiki and index (also Dangerous Dungeons!).
• Not OSR in particular but still awesome: here's an unofficial and completely free and really cool Zelda RPG, Reclaiming the Wild.
• After having shown the processes behind the scenes for Hex, the amazingly baroque citycrawl, here are the writeups for a handful of rival city-states.
• Thor Takes D&D talks about non-classes where advancement is linked to a society/club/cult, somewhat like in RuneQuest (part 1 and part 2). And here are the basics for a gonzo mythic Greece in space setting.
• Screwhead from Was It Likely? shared a thought-provoking article about the impermanence of magic (and the opposite of proper physical means and swordplay). There's also an Into the Odd hack for the bullet hell dungeon crawl genre (with online generators here).
• Nathan Treme from the Highland Paranormal Society shared a city block generator (for the upcoming The Stolen City setting) and a weird name-and-title generator.