I'd like to use this post as an opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Domen Kozelj (Which is part of the reason I'm using the name Dark Pupil, as my actual one is utterly unpronounceable in English). I'm a Concept Artist working in video games, but more importantly to this Website and Blog, I'm a massive nerd and a big enjoyer of the TTRPG hobby (primarily the OSR space, but I love everything in the indie scene).
Lately I've found myself spending a lot of time fiddling with personal RPG related projects, Doodles, Illustrations, world building and Adventure design. I also love to scour the interweb for blogs and videos about game design theory, dungeon building... you get the gist. I'll include some of my favorites in a future post.
I hope to make this a space where I can post Ideas, sketches, little vignettes of world building, complain about the latest drama in the OSR and muse philosophical about ideas better articulated on other peoples blogs.
Writing's not really a strength of mine, so I very much intend to lean into image making. A large part of this blog will probably be updates on whatever I've been sketching and Illustrating. If I can attach a couple of adventure hooks or random tables to flesh them out my hope is that'll be enough for some of you to find value in the exercise and maybe even chuck a couple of these ideas into your games.
A while back I released my first free Adventure for Shadowdark called the Malign Keep. It's extremely terse and can be printed on a single A4 sized sheet of paper (both sides). This little project was me testing the waters, seeing what the process of designing is like, how long it takes, how to do play tests etc. I'm already working on a setting zine with a whole bunch of adventures like it, so stay tuned for that!
I've also been drawing these stamp sized Illustrations and writing very short hooks you could use to build an adventure around. The plan is to very slowly work my way up to a d100 list, at which point I can publish them somewhere for people to use. They're fun bite-sized brain exercises and it's always nice having a big stash of ideas I can pull out when I'm not sure what to build a session around.
Here's a small preview with more to come in future posts:
I have a whole host of other stuff buzzing around in my head too, waiting to be incoherently spilled onto a blog post. Like anyone who's ever GMed a game, I too have been working on my own system and setting for a few years now (maybe that'll be something I share at one point or another).
But I've talked your ear off enough for an introductory post. I'd like to keep these journals somewhat regular, so please subscribe to my newsletter if you find any of the work here intriguing. There's more where that came from and I hope to see you in the next one!
