Iconic Encounters – You must be this tall to ride!

I got this idea for a series of posts about the most Iconic Encounters in old-school style adventures. I don’t mean this type of adventure is repetitive, but there are some types of encounters that appear with certain regularity, are quite entertaining and challenging, and thus have become iconic for me.

by Diogo Nogueira

The first of these I would like to talk about is the “You must be this tall to ride!” encounter, which often is found in the beginning of an adventure, or in a section that will introduce the meaty part of it. I first heard about the term hearing Jim Wampler pass around some of his wisdom. It has a few characteristics I will examine further below.

  • In the beginning of the adventure or at the beginning of the most important part of it.
  • Involves a very difficult challenge that can cause a TPK if not handled well (it can be a powerful monster or group of monsters, a devious trap, powerful spell, and so on).
  • There must be tips the player can pick up that indicates how the PCs can deal with the challenge.
  • The challenge can be dealt with in a much easier way using cleverness and exploiting some weakness (which can be inferred using the tips).
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Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells won a “Questies” Award of 2019!

If you are into OSR games, and modern games with Old School spirit, you are probably familiar with Ben Milton’s YouTube channel, Questing Beast. It is possibly the most well known RPG review channel out there, and it is especially interested in games, adventures and other books related to Old School Gaming.

Some of my books have been favorably reviewed there in the past (watch the review SB&CS, DS&DS and SS&SS here), but now Ben has been revisiting those reviews and giving out awards called “Questies” for each of the years he has been reviewing them.

And to my surprise, Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells was awarded the Questies for Best GM Toolkit of 2019! I am so happy and honored by this! Not only I am a huge fan o Ben’s work on the channel and on his games and adventures, but I am a fan of his game’s critique and learned a lot by his reviews!

You can watch the complete video on which he announces his picks right here.

Continue reading “Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells won a “Questies” Award of 2019!”