Excellence from the Blogosphere (July-August)

Finally, here's the latest Excellence in the Blogosphere post, this time looking at posts from July and August (with a few outliers as usual).

• Melan from Beyond Fomalhaut celebrated his third bloggaversary (not his word), and talked about the past and the future of his zine and other publications (Castle Xyntillan and Helvéczia, yay!), while also discussing the "the end of the OSR". Here are some responses (in good old-fashioned blog posts) from Anthony Huso and EOTB.
• It's hard to pick favourites posted by Konsumterra, but this short piece about monstrous snails spoke to me. It is exactly the kind of article you can easily save, print out, and add to your dungeon design folder. Also make sure you check out these d100 mission tables for fighters, thieves, clerics, and wizards.
• Speaking of simple tables, Tristan Tanner from The Bogeyman's Cave shared this simple d66 table for generating inspiring dungeon names.
• Another simple table is from Pride and Parchment by Sir Paperweight the Third concerning religious rituals.
• Rober Conley of Bat in the Attic briefly discussed the histories and problems of the RuneQuest and Traveller OGL (with a deeper look into other d100 games here).
• waywardwayfarer from The Dragon's Flagon talked about transparency from the DM's side, its benefits and how to achieve it.
• Arnold K of Goblin Punch introduces two terms when talking about adventures and situations: generic optimum and dynamism, and - using these neat terms - discusses ways to improve encounters (and thus adventures). Also check out this overhaul of encounter checks and this simple and fairly unintrusive meta currency.
• Pilgrim Procession From the Pilgrim's Temple shares a snippet of procedural hex description inspired by Lungfungus.
• Speaking of Lungfungus, he shared two dungeons (Lair of the Old Sorceror and The Ancient Winery), quickly followed by a third (Burial Temple of the Tridobatrakus).
• Courtney Campbell of Hack & Slash discusses why most published high level adventures fail, and what high level actually means in different editions of D&D.
• Wizard Lizard from Underground Adventures shares a gonzo science fantasy hack of Into the Odd and a mashup of OD&D and ODD.
• GraphitePrime talks about running a succubus as a demonic spirit that actually haunts the characters-
• Delta discusses the benefits of starting at 3rd level instead of 1st. The comment section is definitely worth checking out.
• Homebrew Homunculus shares a random table to generate random perfumes (made by Duryan the Gardener), and also discusses inversing the relationship of background and stats (i.e. the worse your stats, the better your background).
• Type 1 Ninja of Two Goblins in a Trenchcoat shares the writeup of the starting town of HELLWALKERS.
• John of The Wandering Gamist discusses his recent experiences climbing Mount Fuji and how it is modelled in OSR games.
• Scott Anderson from Treasure Hunters HQ shares an essay concerning emergent narratives.
• Martin O of Goodberry Monthly is creating a "kilodungeon". Here is the latest instalment (with links to the previous posts).
• Michael Kennedy from Sheep and Sorcery shares a pointcrawl system hack for LotFP.
• ravencrowking responds to an old discussion concerning player agency and gives advice to beginning judges (of the DCC kind).
• David B. of Psionic Blast from the Past shared his massive OD&D West Marches overland rules (with several addenda, like his campsite rules, weather/event rules, downtime rules, and setting description). There's also a slightly more detailed reaction table, a tweaked version of Vancian magic with a spell list, and advice and procedures for creating hex contents, designing traps and tricks, stocking dungeons, and creating treasure hoards.
• Inkheart from Iron & Ink further discusses their Yoon-Suin house rules, specifically downtime rules and disease/poison/death.
• Eric Diaz from Methods & Madness talks about the weight of gold in OD&D and 5E, and its implications.
• Michael Raston from The Lizard Man Diaries shares an index to his most important posts on Infinigrad and Guild Dogs.
• Justin Stewart of Dragons Gonna Drag talks about the kind of tasks/skills characters in his campaign are assumed to be competent at (because they are adventurers).
• maxcan7 from Weird & Wonderful Worlds automated all the tables from Chapter 6 of Hubris.
• Yora from Spriggan's Den talks about a very different cosmology than AD&D or Planescape.
• Joseph Manola of Against the Wicked City shares some very interesting (and authentic!) 19th century urban folklore, and another condensation of a Pathfinder AP: Mummy's Mask.
• noisms from Monsters and Manuals, as usual, talked about various interesting things, including two ways to classify monsters (the classicist-Linnaean and the romantic-Glaurungian), a list of forgotten gems upon celebrating his 1500th post, some cool dungeon entrances, and the pricing of RPG books (it's part of a longer discussion: part 1, part 2, and part 3).
• Daniel J. Hanley from The Engine of Oracles shared a bunch of fairy dragons: Ttrefolic and Urtician, Lotosic and Orchidic, Quercic and Corylic, and the Rosy Dragon.
• Allandros from Legacy of the Bieth talks about a community-based advancement system with lots of links to other cool stuff.
• If you wondered what SWORDDREAM is, there's this interview that might help.
• The official Encounter Critical webpage may appear defunct, but red_kangaroo from Library of Attnam has you covered.
• John Large from Red Dice Diaries is sharing details of Campaign Kludge piece by piece.
• Jones Smith from Was It Likely? shared his current version of the Peril System and discussed various topics (incremental modifiers, jenga towers, and to-hit rolls) from a design perspective.