Inspirational and Educational Reading

Here are some things that we think are awesome. His Majesty the Worm wouldn’t exist without them. If you consume this media, you’ll get what we’re going for with this game.

Core inspiration

The central influences on His Majesty the Worm all happen to be comics. Not sure why comics were the main inspiration here; something about the visual medium and the vaguely alternate aesthetic? We don't know!

Dungeon Meshi by Ryoko Kui

Dungeon Meshi is the most thoughtful treatment of the physicality of dungeoneering that we've ever read. The characters, their gear, and their journeys have a practical weight. Its considerations of exploration, food, and exhaustion are fun and evocative. This should be required reading for anybody that wants to ignore mundane gear or avoid tracking rations.

You can run His Majesty the Worm as a Dungeon Meshi RPG if you swap the word “alchemy” for “cooking.”

House of Orr by Nolan T. Jones, Rilley Dutton, and Richard Zayas and artist Victoria Grace Elliott

A defunct and unfinished webcomic that is currently super hard to find on the internet. As such, apologies for including it here.

That said, House of Orr genuinely shaped our thinking about “the party as a character.” In the setting, political capital is held by adventuring guilds. A struggling guild, the titular House of Orr (who, by tradition, requires all members to take on a new name with the element “Orr”—Orrlock, Orrdalf, Orrwyn, etc.), hopes to establish itself as a political power. With its whimsical elements, House of Orr is genuinely delightful. It evokes the sense of playfulness that we want a game of His Majesty the Worm to have.

I Roved Out In Search of Truth and Love by Alexis Flowers

A “warmly pornographic” comic. If you strip out all the pornography, you have a super fun fantasy story. If you strip out all the fantasy story, you have some damn good smut. It is humorous and beautiful in a way that we want a game of His Majesty the Worm to be.

By default, His Majesty the Worm isn't pornographic— that would require a lot of buy-in, consent tools, etc. It's not the sort of game we’re trying to run 99% of the time. It is, however, an “adult” game. Adventurers can buy into relationships with each other by electing the Lovers Bond.

Rat Queens by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch

Goddamn, Rat Queens rules. The friendship and interactions between the Rat Queens illustrates the inter-party relationships of His Majesty the Worm. We want every adventure to delve into each character’s motivations, backstory, and friendships in the same way that Rat Queens does.

The one-two punches (e.g., the Betty Climber) that the Rat Queens perform in combat are half the reason the Challenge system works the way it does, too. Aid each other in combat to get the BIG numbers.

Movies

As Above, So Below

A found footage film where archaeologists-cum-urban-explorers delve into the Paris catacombs. They find Templar tombs, treasure, out-of-place artifacts, demons, and doom. It’s a great example of having a mythic underworld sitting under a major metropolitan area.

Cube

A group of people wake up in a bizarre complex of interconnected cubes that are also death traps. Slowly, they start to piece together the puzzle of how to navigate them safely. A great example of how claustrophobic and terrifying crawling through a death-trap dungeon would be.

Indiana Jones

The pulp content of the Indiana Jones movies makes them genre staples in terms of dungeon-crawling. Think about the cool traps in Raiders of the Lost Ark or the puzzles in The Last Crusade. It’s rare to see such careful attention to dungeon-crawling deliberately called out in popular media.

Labyrinth

A young woman’s baby brother is trapped in the center of a sprawling maze by the Goblin King and she has until midnight to rescue him. As she adventures through the maze, she solves riddles, makes allies, and overcomes challenges. Dungeon-crawling at its most delightful.

Spine of Night

Although it’s not about dungeon crawling, the sheer inventiveness of its ultra-gory, heavy-metal aesthetic is hard to rival. It deals with brutal warriors, greedy scholars, winged assassins, and power-mad sorcerers delving into powers that mortals were not meant to know. Watch it and be inspired.

Books

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Several narratives beautifully woven together: an academic critique of a found footage horror film, the personal journal of a man’s descent into schizophrenia, letters from a character’s mother. House of Leaves plays with text in a way that few novels do. People say it’s weird but it’s honestly pretty gettable if you’re willing to give it a try.

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Framed as a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, Invisible Cities lists fifty-five fictitious cities and their fictitious histories. As a meditation on memory, it is excellent, compelling the reader to search for hidden meanings in the text. It is an example of what is meant by the term “anti-canon.”

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

The titular character lives (almost) alone in a museum world comprising three floors: a flooded basement, sprawling central corridors, and the occasional bird winging through the upper stories. An excellent example of what a mythic Underworld might feel like.

Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin

In this novel, the main character is a priestess of the Old Powers. She tends a lightless labyrinth of tombs—a labyrinth with a dark, unknown purpose. Forty-percent of the story is told without the visual sense; this seems like an impossible task but is wildly successful.

Ultimately, this novel is one of the finest examples of fantasy fiction in the English language.

Blogs

His Majesty the Worm suckled on the terrible, sweet milk that came out of the blogosphere during the nascence of the OSR movement. All posts listed below are online as of this printing.

“Blorb Principles,” from Idiomdrottning by Sandra Snan

“Blorb” is a funny name given to a prep style that emphasizes preparing the game space thoroughly before players begin to interact with it. It advocates creating a robust setting up front so that the GM has to do very little (if any) improv during the game.

In order of precedence, blorb prioritizes: 1. Prep 2. Procedure 3. Ideas that fill in the gaps between prep and procedure

If this appeals to you, you will find a game type analogous to how His Majesty the Worm was played during its seven years of playtesting.

Link: https://idiomdrottning.org/blorb-principles

“Dungeon Checklist,” from Goblinpunch by Arnold K

This is an excellent tool to use while building dungeons, and served as an inspiration for our own checklist in Appendix E.

Link: http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/01/ dungeon-checklist.html

“The Dungeon as Mythic Underworld,” from Philotomy’s Musings by Jason Cone

Philotomy’s Musings is a collection of interpretive essays about OD&D that contained a revolutionary way to re-imagine megadungeons. The way it frames a dungeon as an inherently mythic space served as an inspiration for the core setting of this game.

Link: https://save.vs.totalpartykill.ca/grab-bag/ philotomy/ (rehosted with permission)

“Handling IC Nastiness,” from Cavegirl’s Game Stuff by Emily Allen

An essay on handling out-of-character traumas and phobias in an honest, collaborative way without using tools that might make players feel put in a spot.

Link: http://cavegirlgames.blogspot.com/2019/02/ handling-ic-nastiness.html

“The ICI Doctrine: Information, Choice, Impact,” from Bastionland by Chris McDowall

This essay articulates that creating a true sense of player agency is done by emphasizing information, choice, and impact. This is a fundamental text to understand how to best organize the conversation of role-playing games from a GM’s perspective.

Link: https://www.bastionland.com/2018/09/the-ici-doctrine-information-choice.html

“Landmark, Hidden, Secret” from DIY & Dragons by Anne

Inspiration for the way that His Majesty the Worm doles out information is drawn directly from this blog post. The post places all information on a continuum, from landmark (obvious) to hidden (requires cursory investigation) to secret (difficult to find).

Link: https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/10/ landmark-hidden-secret.html

“In Corpathium,” from Last Gasp Grimoire by Logan Knight

The DNA of the City-creation rules in Appendix D are drawn from Logan Knight’s “Corpathium” setting.

Link: https://www.lastgaspgrimoire.com/in-corpathium/

“Same Page Tool,” from Deeper in the Game by Christopher Chinn

The Same Page Tool is a great resource to help players and GMs understand what they want to get out of the game. It will be an asset while running session 0 and bringing new players into the game.

Link: https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/

“TFP DMG: How I Use Skills,” from Polemic, 10’ by James Young

A treatise on how to adjudicate tests of fate. The post argues that adventurers are competent and their skills (or motifs, in this game’s paradigm) should let them do crazy things. Call for tests of fate only when the adventurers are trying to go above and beyond.

Link: http://tenfootpolemic.blogspot.com/2017/01/dm-shit-how-i-use-skills.html