WELCOME to the DUNGEONVERSE!

Macchiato Monsters is a game of adventures in a dungeonverse built around the characters. Whether you got this book to start a campaign from scratch, play in an existing setting, or customise your own ruleset, I hope it'll be of use. To play, you need to be familiar with tabletop roleplaying games. All the rules I need as a Referee are within these pages, but you may want to ignore or replace some of them. That's perfectly fine. It's what old school gaming is about.

Old school gaming, wut?!

In tabletop roleplaying, old school isn't about nostalgia, it's about gameplay. You can go online to find a lot of information about this game style, both the actual old ones and the more recent productions. In the meantime, let me give you a quick list of principles I try to adhere to as a Referee:

• Rulings over rules. This book doesn't cover every specific situation that can happen in the game. You and your friends will have to agree on edge cases, spell use, abilities, etc. Do not be afraid to make rulings, but be sure to stick to them.
• Player intelligence. Players face challenges with their own smarts, not with the superpowers on their character sheets.
• Resource management. Hit points, rations, lantern oil, a length of rope: everything can be vital to a character’s survival. A rusty crowbar can make the difference between life and death.
• Deadly fights. Adventuring isn't about slaying monsters. Violence is often a last resort: sneak, parley, betray, or run before you attack. Trust us on this and you'll live longer.
• Embrace randomness! Refereeing is way more fun if you don’t know in advance what is going to happen. Fortunately, we have sandbox scenarios and random tables to keep things fresh and surprising for everyone.

Text conventions. In this book, ‘you’ is addressed to the player. Boxed text like this is addressed to the Referee. Some boxes are marked with a dice blotch to denote optional rules, and others are marked with a chat blotch to indicate a shared narration rule. Also optional, these lighten the Referee’s effort by giving the players a little bit of control over the setting. The coffee beans blotch are there to remind you of rules.

What inspired Macchiato Monsters

As the name suggests (perhaps too subtly), Macchiato Monsters was originally cobbled together in 2015 as an adaptation of The Black Hack (Black), with the classes and magic system from Whitehack (Mehrstam), both inspired by the original fantasy game (Gygax & Arneson). In the years that followed, Macchiato Monsters became its own thing through playtesting and experimenting. Along the way, I drew from the B/X boxsets (Moldvay, Marsh & Cook), Into the Odd (McDowall), NanoChrome (Grümph), Maze Rats (Milton), Donjon & Cie (Felten), and maybe more. The OGL is at the end of the book.