James Maliszewski

DDE: Iounian

Artwork by Jason Sholtis

Since my Christmas post sharing a monster from the abandoned Dwimmermount Designer's Edition was so well received, I though...

Commentary on Dwarves & Gnomes

Happy New Year!

In Tuesday's post, I promised to provide some commentary about Dwarves, Gnomes, Kobolds, and other related topics, since I didn't want that post to be any lengthier than it already was — and it would have been, as I have a fair bit to say about these topics. That's because Dwarves w...

DDE: Dwarves & Gnomes

Following last week's Christmas post and yesterday's Substack post, I have decided to offer up some posts over the next few weeks that give some idea of the kind of thing that I had in mind for the Dwimmermount Designer's Edition, had I ever produced. Consider these drafts or rough cuts of stuff I hoped to include. <...

An Old School (Essentials) Christmas Gift

Artwork by Jason Sholtis

The Dwimmermount Designer’s Edition is a project I still return to from time to time, though no longer with any real expectation that it will ever be completed. What continues to give it its hold on me is the 2025-12-25 05:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post

Year's End

2025 is rapidly coming to a close. One of the unexpected consequences of getting older is that time seems to move much more quickly than it did when I was younger. That only makes sense, I suppose. When you're ten years old, a year is 10% of your entire life; when you're fifty, it's only 2%, which is a significant difference. Even so, I'm astounded by how swiftly this past year has gone by.

House of Worms Commemorative Portrait

Today, I thought I'd take a break from sharing more of my thoughts about Dream-Quest in order to give you, my patrons, something unavailable to other readers of Grognardia — the full commemorative portrait of the major player and non-player characters of my recently con...

The Current State of Dream-Quest (Part II)

In my last post, I talked about the origins of the Dream-Quest project and how my desire to honor not just the memory of H. P. Lovecraft, but more specifically the peculiar power of his Dreamlands tale...

The Current State of Dream-Quest (Part I)

Though I haven’t posted anything new about the Dream-Quest project lately, it’s not for lack of activity — provided one is willing to count thinking as a form of work. I mean that only half in jest. Thinking can be real work, but only when it leads somewhere. Other...

Dream-Quest: The Great Ones

As I continue to ponder Dream-Quest and just what I want this project to be, a recurring topic concerns the gods of the Dreamlands and their priests. While there are a number of reasons why I keep returning to this particular topic, one is practical: would the priests of these gods be available as a player character class and, if so, what would such a class look like? I...

Inquiry

(Dream-Quest posts will resume next week with some thoughts about the Great Ones, the gods of the Dreamlands. Today, I wanted to talk about something much more mundane.)

One of the things that has surprised me most over the years is how much Grognardia has grown beyond anything I could have ...

Dream-Quest: An Example

After thinking some more about my previous post, I concluded that it might be helpful — both for myself and patrons — if I tried to offer some concrete examples of what I was talking about. If nothing else, they'll serve as yet more fodder for discussion, but I also hope do more than that. As projects ...

Dream-Quest: Mirroring the Psyche

As I continue to think about Dream-Quest, I keep coming back to the idea that the Dreamlands are not a fixed geography but rather a landscape of the psyche. This idea was reinforced when I reread “Celephaïs” for this week's 2025-11-04 05:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post

Dream-Quest: Generating the Dreamlands

In my public post a couple of days ago, I discussed the idea that every referee’s Dreamlands ought to be his own. There is no a fixed geography or canonical map common to every Dream-Quest campaign, but instead a personal landscape of wonder, nostalgia, and unease. Lovecraft’s dream s...

Dream-Quest: Building the Dream

As I discussed in two previous posts, I've begun to realize that, from a game design perspective, it's best to think of the Dreamlands not as a place but as a process, a way of seeing. Lovecraft never drew a map of them and, despite the best efforts of later generations of fans, it's almost impossible to establish a canonical version of them. That's because HPL wasn't concerned ...

Dream-Quest: The Mutable Dreamer?

Lately, I’ve been pondering an intriguing — and probably difficult to implement — idea for Dream-Quest. I’m not yet sure if it’s good or even workable, but it’s been rattling around in my head long enough that I feel compelled to explore it a little.

The idea is this: what if each player character — the Dreamer — doesn’t have a fixed class when v...

Dream-Quest: The Mutable Dreamlands (Part II)

As I mentioned in Part I of this post, I’m still very much in the “thinking out loud” stage of developing a system and set of guidelines to help referees create their own Dreamlands for Dream-Quest campaigns. Nothing here is final; like the Dreamlands themselves, everything remains muta...

Dream-Quest: The Mutable Dreamlands (Part I)

One of the guiding ideas behind Dream-Quest is that there is no such thing as a definitive version of the Dreamlands. Lovecraft himself wasn't completely consistent about them. The places mentioned in his stories, like Ulthar, the Enchanted Wood, or Celephaïs, shift in tone and detail from tale to tale. Geography in his Dream Cycle is a matter of mood and association, not of ma...

Dream-Quest: Anchoring Items

As Dream-Quest continues to take shape in my mind, I keep circling back to the question of permanence within the Dreamlands. What, exactly, endures from one visit to the Dreamlands to the next and what inevitably fades away?

When I first tried to draw a clear line between the Earthb...

Varieties of Dreamborn

At the end of last month, I suggested two possible character origins in Dream-Quest: earthborn and dreamborn. Earthborn characters, as their name implies, are mortals who dream their way into that otherworld, while dreamborn characters are natives of the fantastic...

Dream-Quest: Poet-Seer Spells (Levels 3 and 4)

3rd Level Spells

Binding Rhyme
Range: 30’ Duration: 1 turn
The Poet-Seer speaks a binding riddle.

• One creature within range cannot cross a threshold, doorway, bridge, or river for the spell’s duration.

• The target may approach the barrier but cannot pass until released.

• Only one binding ...

  2025-09-26 01:43:49 +0000 UTC View Post