They come from a dimension made of darkness and eat souls.
Along with the bonus monster this month, I think this marks the completion of the bestiary section for Only Monsters Here, so we're getting pretty close to the finish line.
2021-08-26 00:08:21 +0000 UTC View Post
The Lighthouse is a creature of nightmares, made from the memories of trauma attached to the first lighthouse ever built on the island of Inkstvarr.
Written for The Nightmares Underneath.
2021-07-29 21:54:42 +0000 UTC View Post
The monthly monster for June is dragon mages! These wizards seek out dragons in order to learn their magic, but too often that magic is more powerful than the human form can handle.
This is a section of Only Monsters Here and is written for The Nightmares Underneath. Included are two custom character roles (which take the place of professions): dragon mage and dragon witch.
2021-06-29 14:37:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Here is the Moon Goblins and Moon God Pantheon chapters from Only Monsters Here, expanded somewhat from their previous releases, with new fonts, stat blocks, and social institutions.
2021-06-03 00:00:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Here is the dark elves chapter for Only Monsters Here. The stat blocks include a couple of walking vehicles, and the bloody lamp illo has been improved, but there's no new art, just new rules and stuff for The Nightmares Underneath.
2021-05-30 22:38:04 +0000 UTC View Post
This month we bring back the chaos riders, with an updated version of the old illustration, and five new illustrations, all with images and stat blocks for both steed and rider.
This is one of the playable monster chapters of Only Monsters Here, written for The Nightmares Underneath.
2021-05-28 19:51:33 +0000 UTC View Post
More plant monsters from the dead city! This one produces arcane chemicals so of course there's a random table for that. This is intended to appear in the next book, Only Monsters Here, so it's written for The Nightmares Underneath.
2021-04-29 17:33:34 +0000 UTC View Post
I have incorporated some additional illustrations into the stat blocks for the Goblin Mutants, and added a new mutant type (the Altered Beast), so here is an even longer version. Probably this is exactly how they will appear in Only Monsters Here.
2021-03-29 19:03:42 +0000 UTC View Post
When you go adventuring and then you die in the dungeon, what happens to your ghost? What if it possessed some plants and they picked up your weapons and continued fighting? Oh no! The next adventurers to come through here will have to fight a plant ghost!
Written up for The Nightmares Underneath. There are more plant monsters coming later.
2021-03-29 18:55:02 +0000 UTC View Post
The goblin mutants of the Sakhab Wastes, ready to go into the next book. Actually they will probably get expanded a bit, based on the stuff that Nathan is working on right now. These guys leaves the wasteland to become mercenaries, and that's how they previously appeared in Dungeon Full of Monsters!
Currently, they're just written up for The Nightmares Underneath, but you can play them as well as fight them.
2021-02-25 13:59:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everybody,
This is just a small update on that game we're working on, The Company of Monsters, which I'm still tweaking and refining here and there in between other things.
Here's the updated reference sheets for the basic moves. As you can see, I've switched to the die pool system used in Blades in the Dark, but the moves remain very PbtA. I still have to revise the monster roles and get everything into layout so it's playable, but we'll get there!
2021-02-08 17:31:15 +0000 UTC View Post
The first monster of this year is the Demongate Shrines, guardian shrines that summon Shrinegate Demons to attack unauthorized passers by. These are going into the next book and are written for The Nightmares Underneath.
2021-02-01 13:01:05 +0000 UTC View Post
This month we have rules for playing trolls in The Nightmares Underneath. Trolls in the wasteland around the dead city are usually ancient and powerful, but not always. Sometimes they start at Level 1! This pdf also includes a collection of NPC stat blocks for different types of trolls and their pet dogs and wolves.
2020-12-28 17:54:59 +0000 UTC View PostHey all, this is just a short update. Recently, Nathan broke his drawing arm. Luckily, he left me with illustrations that I can release later this month, but we might be late again with releases around the beginning of next year, as we wait for his arm to heal. I'll have text to share from Only Monsters Here at some point soon though, so hopefully there won't be any long periods of inactivity around here.
As always, thanks for the support and take care of yourselves.
-Johnstone 2020-12-07 14:32:20 +0000 UTC View Post
And now we get to see inside: there is a map! We did a monster map!
Part 2 of the Giant Husk introduces one of the wizards that controls this horrid monster and shows us two of the seven rooms inside it. Like Part 1, written for The Nightmares Underneath.
Parts 3 and 4 will be bonus monster releases, for patrons only!
2020-11-30 22:57:57 +0000 UTC View Post
The giant husk is a huge monster that lumbers around the wastelands breathing fire. It has a whole story connected to it, including multiple characters, so I've split the parts up. Part 1 is the monster itself, written up for The Nightmares Underneath.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we take a look inside the husk, and find a kind of dungeon inside it!
2020-11-29 21:41:23 +0000 UTC View Post
So, this post is to announce a second book we have in the works. A little while ago I posted a draft of some monstrous professions that were for playing monster characters in The Nightmares Underneath, but I realized they didn't really fit with the main themes of Nightmares on Monster Island. I wanted to give them a setting where you could play a party that consisted entirely of monster PCs, maybe even with most of the NPCs they interact with also being monsters. The island of Inkstvarr doesn...
2020-10-10 18:12:29 +0000 UTC View Post
The monster for this month is the Landshark of Kulderhaven. A fishing village on the north coast of Inkstvarr is plagued by a terrible monster every night. The king has sent new settlers to repopulate, and monster hunters to slay the beast. Are you among their numbers? How will you save the village?
I wrote this up for Labyrinth Lord currently, so it's more compatible with old school systems, but this monster is intended for Nightmares on Monster Island.
2020-10-10 12:15:24 +0000 UTC View Post
The Giant Hunger is a monster that lives beneath the dead city of Ardoussarlis. He hungers for the purple crystals that the mutant goblins like to feed to their dragonseer (from November 2019), so as you can imagine, there's a rather one-sided conflict going on between them.
I wrote this guy up for The Nightmares Underneath only, because now there's TWO of these books I'm working on, apparently? Good lord.
2020-10-02 13:32:03 +0000 UTC View Post
It turns out the squarecrawl map that I posted previously has been kind of a pain in the ass to work on. Plus, the monstrous professions don't really have a place in that book. so I decided to bring all the releases connected to the dead city of Ardoussarlis and the surrounding wastelands together (and also, I've been writing more of them lately).
The premise here is simple. The dungeons with the treasure are in the dead city (hex K2), but you need to cross the wasteland to get there. Y...
2020-08-22 16:36:41 +0000 UTC View Post
July's Monthly Monster is a new adventuring profession for The Nightmares Underneath and Labyrinth Lord: The Alien Astronaut. You can play as a weird alien exploring Earth with your collection of technological gizmos. Also included is The Terranaut, a monstrous alien visitor originally released back in June 2018, so you can have an enemy for your alien astronaut to vie with.
2020-08-17 22:28:21 +0000 UTC View Post
I am slowly but surely catching up to the present! The monthly monster for June is the goblin pirates of the North Sea, written up for The Nightmares Underneath as both antagonist monsters and also player characters. Includes more new random gear tables!
I ended up writing a bunch of material to go with the monstrous professions I posted a little while ago. It doesn't fit within the monster island book I announced we were working on, so maybe I will put it together with the recent gobli...
2020-07-24 19:41:59 +0000 UTC View Post
The goblin prince of birds is the chief lunar hierophant of the Moon Goblins. For use as a monstrous antagonist OR as a player character!
I think I've finally got a good format for presenting monster player characters in The Nightmares Underneath. If I use the various orcs and goblins and other creatures in the wastelands around the dead city of Ardoussarlis, I should be able to produce a book that lets you play monsters who are still doing the normal dungeon crawl, but also competing w...
2020-06-29 17:15:31 +0000 UTC View Post
In general, I've resisted the urge to write player character versions of our monsters for old school D&D (and/or Labyrinth Lord etc). The Company of Monsters was supposed to be the game where you play the monsters. HOWEVER! At this point I think I've got a decent framework to make monster templates for use with The Nightmares Underneath, composed of marks of heritage and abilities like those you get from divine patrons (both from The Nameless Grimoire).
Here's a first draft of the r...
2020-05-21 16:28:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's the horde of beasts, a nightmare creature originating on the island of Inkstvarr, the subject of our next book.
Versions for Dungeon World and The Nightmares Underneath are in separate pdfs.
2020-05-20 16:42:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everybody,
Okay so first update is just to let you all know that in February I started experiencing pain issues related to sitting in front of the computer allatime. I'm dealing with it, but it makes my work schedule somewhat uncertain, so the deadlines we have on this patreon project are going to have to get a bit looser. I still intend to release the same amount of stuff, but inevitably some things are going to be late.
In more exciting update news, the current book we're wo...
2020-03-27 23:01:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Mouth Eyes is the monthly monster for March. It comes to this world from beyond space and time to kidnap humans and subject them to the dire effects of the outer planes. They come back, at least, but they don't come back the same.
This one is Labyrinth Lord only right now (though in The Nightmares Underneath layout), because it's mostly a series of brand new random mutation tables.
2020-03-25 16:45:30 +0000 UTC View Post
This month's monster is the gargoyle wizards who conspire to make gargoyle sculptures common to all human cities and towns. What better way to help their kind pass unnoticed in the night? They go with the Stone King from last July.
Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord versions in the same pdf.
2020-03-02 06:49:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Progress is happening slowly on The Company of Monsters, but the revisions to the basic moves (along with dramatic moves, interstitial moves, and travelling moved) are now in an attractive and usable format! These will be incorporated into later releases once I get more revisions and additional material finished.
2020-02-18 22:01:27 +0000 UTC View Post
King Buzzu, worshipped by poor and wretched goblins of the wastes, flies over the lands around the dead city of Ardoussarlis, wreaking destruction. The kingdom of Ardoussarlia lives on in other lands, but the city's last king lives on here, as this fearsome, undead monster.
I started writing about this made-up city's mythology six years ago, and here I am, still adding to it one monster at a time. It's a weird thing to contemplate.
I just did standard Dungeon World and Labyrinth L...
2020-01-31 14:35:17 +0000 UTC View Post