OSR October Prompts for 2025

OSR October is less than a month away. Do you know what you’re going to talk about?

One thing that I like about RPG-a-DAY in August are the supplied prompts. They give me a nice challenge and touch of inspiration. As far as I know (and please correct me if I’m wrong!), there’s no such list for OSR October.

I want to change that.

My Proposal

One thing I want to do with this proposal is to accommodate content creators who may or may not produce daily content.

The strategy is simple. Each week has a noun—the base topic. Each day of the week is an adjective.

Weeks:

Week #	Dates	Topic (Noun)
1	1—4	Published Game
2	5—11	Monster or Place
3	12—18	Rule
4	19—25	Magic Item
5	26—31	Spell/Magic System

Days

Day #	Day	Adjective
1	Sunday	Favorite
2	Monday	Most recently discovered
3	Tuesday	Most wished for
4	Wednesday	Most overlooked
5	Thursday	Strangest
6	Friday	Misunderstood
7	Saturday	Deadliest

How-To/Examples

The “best” way to use these charts depends on the frequency of your content:

• Daily creators (Lawful): Simply combine the week’s topic with the day’s adjective. Example: October 10, 2025 is a Friday. The topic for that week is “OSR Monster or Place,” and the adjective for Friday is “Misunderstood.” Therefore the full topic for that day is “Misunderstood OSR Monster or Place”. This is the “lawful” option. See “Truly Chaotic” below.

• Weekly creators (Neutral): Each week has a “noun” associated with it. Use that noun as the topic for your content. Example: You are releasing content on October 10, 2025. The topic for that week is “OSR Monster or Place.” Don’t worry about adjectives, just talk about that!

• Weekly creators (Chaotic): As above, but roll 1d7 (use a 1d8; reroll [or pick!] on an 8) for the adjective. Example: You are releasing content on October 10, 2025. The topic for that week is “OSR Monster or Place.” You roll 1d8 and get a 5, so your topic will be “Strangest OSR Monster or Place”.

• Any (Truly Chaotic): For each thing you produce during October, regardless of frequency or day, just roll on both tables and use the combined result as your prompt.

Outro

That’s my proposal for OSR October 2025. Personally, I think I’ll use the “Weekly creators (Chaotic)” approach. I hope that this has been helpful for the community, and I look forward to seeing your videos, hearing your podcasts, and reading your blogs.

Before I go, I do have a question for you. Is the hashtag “#OSROctober2025” or “#OSRtober2025?” I prefer the former.

Thanks for reading!

The Clerics of Caiyagi

One of the gaming podcasts that I listen to is the Nerd’s RPG Variety Cast by someone called “The Other Jason.” On his podcast, March has been “Martial arts March.” He was running a contest for listeners to call in and tell their favourite martial arts property, and a gaming idea inspired by that property. This post is an extended and updated version of my 90-second phone call entry.

My Favourite Martial Arts Properties

My initial thought to the contest was “well, that leaves me out. I don’t like martial arts movies.” But then I thought about it, and it dawned on me that there were three properties that I was a fan of. For some reason I don’t think of them as martial arts, but there’s no denying that they are:

1. 1972’s Kung Fu television series.
2. 1984’s The Karate Kid motion picture.
3. 1994’s The Next Karate Kid motion picture.

Their Influence on my Gaming

The second part of the contest was to say a way that the properties influenced my gaming. To be honest, they hadn’t, but that would make for a boring contest entry. So I thought about what they had in common. The answer was that both Kung Fu’s Caine and Mr Miayagi from last century’s Karate Kid movies were pacifist heroes. So it occurred to me to make a pacifist character class for OSR style games.

While the monk might seem like the obvious class to serve as the base for this new class, I never felt the monk truly fit into my fantasy world. So I decided that this new class would really be a type of cleric. The Clerics of the God of Peace, Caiyagi. (See what I did there?)

Restrictions

These are clerics, just like any other, except they have taken the following vows:

1. Never attack anyone (though see “Special Abilities” below). Turning Undead is not considered an attack.
2. Never pursue the fleeing.
3. Never refuse mercy to your enemy.
4. Defend the innocent whenever possible.

Breaking a vow will result in the loss of all clerical abilities and all special abilities

Special Abilities

In addition to all the normal clerical abilities, Clerics of Caiyagi can do the following:

1. Defense Rolls: If an opponent makes a successful attack, the cleric is allowed a saving throw to avoid the attack completely. Depending on the game/edition this could be a save vs Petrification, a reflex save, or a Dex save. Because this is a divine ability, some DMs may decide to allow the cleric to use his Wisdom bonus instead of Dex.
2. Counter-attacks: If an melee opponent makes an attack roll and misses, the cleric can immediately make a counter attack. This is the only circumstance in which a Cleric of Caiyagi is allowed to make an attack. There is no limit to how many times per round this can happen, so if two different opponents attack and miss in the same round, the cleric can make counter attacks for each. If your game/edition allows monsters to have multiple attacks per round, the cleric is allowed a counter-attack for every attack that misses.

Epilogue

I thought that this would make for an interesting character, though maybe it’s best suited as an NPC.

That’s all for this time. I know I haven’t posted in a while. The podcast has been sucking up all my free “creative time.” I haven’t even been getting any work done on Lucky 7. When I started the podcast I didn’t realize how much time went into the edit. It’s not bad on the episodes I record alone, but when I have a guest host the conversations seems to go on longer and go off track more frequently, which leads to a lot more editing.

I’m going to try to get back to blogging regularly though. Maybe semi-weekly instead of weekly.

Podcast Episode 3: Alignment Systems

This is the first episode of OSR October. We talk about the three different alignment systems used in D&D's history, and a little about alignments in general. Surprisingly, there's a lot that we agree on in this episode!

You can listen to the episode at Anchor.fm, or using the embedded player right here:

Podcast Episode 2: Character Backgrounds.

The newest episode of the podcast went live, and I can now embed it into the blog. So if you want to list, just click this button:

In this episode, we discuss character backgrounds. I like them short and emergent, while James is in favor of slightly longer and more defined ones.

Apparently James likes longer episodes, too, because this one is 21 minutes long.

Dekahedron RPG Podcast Episode 1 Published

I published the first episode of the Dekahedron RPG podcast this week.

If you use a “real” podcatcher (I use AntennaPod but there are many others), you should be able to find it in the search results. If you can’t find it, the direct RSS feed is https://anchor.fm/s/94739d0/podcast/rss.

If you listen to your podcasts another way–like through the web or something, the following links will work:

• Anchor.fm (this is where they appear first)
• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcasts
• Castro.fm
• Google Podcasts
• Overcast.fm
• Pocket Casts
• Spotify

James and I are recording a new episode tomorrow. The topic is “obnoxnious character behavior.” That’s different from “obnoxious player behavior.” That will be a future episode.

Podcast and Moana Updates

This week’s gaming activity has been focused on the podcast:

• The Dekahedron website now is 100% about the podcast.
• I recorded a five minute “Episode Zero”

I hope to get the real first episode out this week.

Unrelated to the podcast, I’ve had a couple thoughts for the Moana campaign:

• I finally watched the Disney movie.
• James gave me a suggestion about navigation that I want to respond to.
• I had a thought about a starting location and why the player will be hidden from native eyes at the start of the campaign.

That's it for this week. I know it's a short post, but most the energy is going to the podcast.

General Update on my RPG Projects

This is a general update on a few different subjects.

Dekahedron (the podcast)

I didn't post the episode yet. There's two reasons for this: 

1. I sent a rough cut to James for his feedback, and he hasn't listened to it yet. Still. Five days later.
2. I want to have a few episodes of backlog before we start to post. This will cover us for when we can' record (like when I have to work a weekend, or one of us has vacation, etc.)

We also didn't get to record an episode this morning. I had an unexpected family event pop up, and James had computer issues. I hope we can find some time this week.

On the other hand, I got some other stuff done for the podcast:

1. I got a "feedback line" where listeners can call in voice feedback. I like phone numbers that spell something, I almost got (XXX)-OLD-TREK, (XXX)-POD-CAST, and (XXX)-FIGHTER, but in the end I picked (XXX)-RPG-CAST. (Note: XXX is not the actual area code.  The area code was different for each number).
2. I switched the dekahedron.com's email provider away from Google. This let me set up a "feedback@" email address for listeners to email us.

Dekahedron (the RPG)

Before it was a podcast, Dekahedron was a a public domain RPG that I created decades ago. It never gained any traction, so I'm finally pulling the plug. I'll be archiving the rules off of the website, and switching the site to support the podcast.

Clout RPG

Speaking of pulling plugs, I'm also killing off my Clout RPG. This one was never finished, and most of the ideas have been incorporated into Lucky 7.  The domain name expires in a few months, so I'm just going to let it disappear.

Lucky 7 RPG Engine

Lucky 7 is now a stand-alone RPG ruleset. Work continues on the draft.

Unlucky 13 House Rules

Unlucky 13 is an expansion of (or a set of house rules for) OSR style games. it is pretty much Lucky 7 for B/X. Work continues.

Crowfield/U.S.S. Crowfield Settings

These are just campaign settings for my own use to run games in. I'm not killing them off.

Commonwealth of Man Setting

Commonwealth of Man is my space-opera (the genre, not the ill-named RPG) campaign that replaced the Astral Web. Technically speaking, the U.S.S. Crowfield setting takes place on a planet in the Commonwealth of Man. I'll be updating this campaign and making some posts about it. 

This Blog

I still plan on making weekly posts here!

That's all for this week!

Podcast Update: Episode #1 recorded

 James and I met online yesterday morning and recorded the first episode of the podcast. The topic was "Fixed vs Variable Weapon Damage."

I think it went well. I was fully prepared for this to be a practice run and for us to have to re-record it next week. But I think it's good enough for me to push out after I finish editing it.

James is a natural co-host. He and I differ enough to approach a topic from different angles, yet we're such good friends that it's still pleasant.

I'm very self conscious of my voice. I had hearing loss as a child, which lead to years of speech therapy. When I hear my recorded voice I just hear a guy with some kind of speech disorder. I don't know of other people hear that when I talk to them. I'm a little worried about mean comments.

Anyway... the episode is done, but I have work to do with edit/post-production. If it goes up this week I'll let you know.

Podcast Update: No News

It's been about a month since I wrote about starting a podcast. I said that I wanted James to join me, but also that I predicted scheduling issues.

That prediction was correct. Between his job, my two jobs, the time reserved for our respective families, and workout schedules, we essentially only have Saturday mornings free. Even then, we only have 3 out of the 4 Saturdays.

Today is Saturday, and we didn't record. We didn't record last Saturday. We haven't gotten together to record at all, though we seem to talk about it every week.

At first I was annoyed at James about this, but then it dawned on me that I never actually told him that we were going to record on either of those dates. That means the fault is all mine.

SO how about it James? Want to record on July 9^TH?

Will "Radio" Kill the Blogging Star?

I'm toying with the idea of starting a podcast.

I've actually been toying with the idea for a while, but I'm getting closer to actually doing it.

The working title is Dekahedron, mainly because I own the domain name and I'm not doing much with it. By that same theory, I suppose it could just be the Snowgen podcast, but I actually have a nifty logo for Dekahedron that I paid artist/graphic designer DesignKat to create for me.

The thought is that I will host it on Anchor. I even have set up the account already. You can look at the public page, but there isn't anything there yet.

I want to do a ten minute episode once a week about the same topics I cover here. I've asked James to join me for the first episode because I find Podcasts with two voices are generally better than solo podcasts. Whether or not he would be a permanent "cast member" remains to be seen. I'm not sure how the technology will allow us to record together, and I predict scheduling issues.

On a side note, I'm in Rhode Island as I type this. But I'm driving back to upstate/western New York tonight.