iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Dolmenwood has been nominated for no fewer than 6 ENNIES! It's an incredible project and it was such an honour to contribute both drawing and writing - my work appears in the Maps Book (nominated for Best Cartography) and Campaign Book (nominated for Best Setting).

An elaborate pen and ink map of Dolmenwood.

Six nominations for Dolmenwood: Best Monster/Adversary, Product of the Year & Best Setting, Best Cartography, best RPG Related Product (twice!).

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Some recent monsters: phrenomorph castes.

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Joshua Carson @joshuacarsonart.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Hey all, I was unfortunately laid off from my job of 3 years working as an environment concept artist @ clockwork labs last week. It was a fun stretch - but now I am seeking a new role! I'll be posting some of my favorite concepts I did during my time there.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Some recent monsters. Phagoplasm; heimgeist; spelltoad; huldra.

A blob-like biomechanoid covered in hungry mouths.

A house scuttles on insectile legs fashioned from scrap.

A three-eyed toad with sigils on its belly.

A toothed maw gapes in the back of a fey woman perched on a moss-grown crag,

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Toshers and mudlarks huddle around trash-fires to tell tales of the Wastewyrm: a dragon, one of the few left in this region of the world, which, legend says, was hatched from an ancient egg which accidentally slipped into the Radula River and was carried into the sewers...

A dripping serpentine dragon with a hungry look and atrophied wings prepares to devour a swordsman, another warrior clutched in its filthy coils.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Scissors rasp in the darkness beneath the city. Dull groans issue from the sepulchral gloom. Something is coming...

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Standard hydra regrow their heads. The vermihydra regrows in both horrifying directions. Adventurers admit that the little ones are "kind of cute." See my Patreon for more free and freaky monsters every Monday.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Have you been good this year? The Sackfather's verminous spies whisper the names of the virtuous and the wicked in his goatish ears.

A pen-and-ink cousin of krampus leers at you, leech-like tongue lolling from his fanged mouth, a gigantic, filthy-looking sack on his back, a dubious present proffered from his hand.

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Rise Up (From the Grave) Comus @riseupcomus.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

"Well, I'm back" he said. Over the last three months, I've keyed every hex in the bounds of the Shire, including rumors, nested random encounters, and five embedded mini-dungeons. I've collated them into a document, linked on the blog:

riseupcomus.blogspot.com

Middle-earth Hexcrawl Project: The Shire (Complete)

Back in September of this year , I began a daily writing prompt inspired by this year's reread of The Lord of the Rings and Idraluna Archiv...

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Rise Up (From the Grave) Comus @riseupcomus.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Hell yeah, another #dungeon23 project comes to fruition

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

After a long hiatus, I'm pleased to announce the continuation of my megadungeon (originally a Dungeon23 project), The Apocalypse Archive!

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Fluxcats are strays who fed on the magical trash and mutants of the Midden, Hex's eldritch trash-heap.

A strange two-headed hairless cat-thing, bristling with unusual appendages.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Sigil spinners are dangerous Hexian predators who lust for mage-meat. Capably of draining wizardly knowledge from their prey, they instinctly weave spells into their webs, laying elaborate eldritch traps for future victims.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Happy Halloween everybody! I've got a new entry in the Hex Guidebook series detailing the necromantic district of Shambleside. Breathe in the reek of embalming fluid and old leather; sip sangwine from Bastien's Blood Bar; bet on the zombie fights in the Rotting Ring. The night beckons...

A patchwork man with swollen cranium, his skin tattooed with eldritch sigils.

An elegant woman with curiously shaped nostrils weeps, her eyes concealed by a black hood, her black garments adorned with strange, stylized flowers.

Strange bones spires, a coffin shop, an osseous dome.

A worm-like creature with a woman's face, its body swathed in tattered robes, looms towards you with withered hands crossed.

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Skerples @skerples.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I've also created an OD&D hexcrawl. www.patreon.com/posts/od-d-h... Not every hex is keyed, but major locations are included, treasure is pre-rolled, and some emergent factions and quests are ready to go.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Like a water weird, but smaller, meaner, and heavily polluted by alchemical runoff. Introducing the puddleweird.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Everyone's heard of owlbears. But what about leechbears?

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

For today's Monstrous Monday: the ideologeist, a ghost with unfinished political business, haunting the body politic.

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ரமணன் @save.vs.totalpartykill.ca · 18/09/2025

A great review by Tim for Wargamer about The Grim and the Dark, a documentary about the #Inq28 scene, Blacheitsu, etc. Looking forward to watching it. It also sounds like a great introduction to the scene.

wargamer.com

Napoleon Dynamite's Warhammer documentary is a glorious guide to grimdark gaming

In 'The Grim and The Dark', Napoleon Dynamite actor Jon Heder journeys into the grimdark indie scene beyond the border of regular Warhammer 40,000

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ரமணன் @save.vs.totalpartykill.ca · 22/09/2025

Queue the Pacific Rim soundtrack: MAC ATTACK is out. (As a PDF, anyway.)

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

I have a new free post up on my blog and the Bearded Devil Patreon, the first in a series of Monstrous Mondays. This entry describes the clever little necromantic assassin-bugs known as earwights. My plan is to eventually build up posts like this for a bestiary book.

A creepy-looking earwig eyes you through the screen. It has a skull-pattern on its wing casing.

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Grant Howitt @gshowitt.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

My hundredth one-page roleplaying game is HAPPY BIRTHDAY GOAT GIRL. You are a goat girl, most beautiful and dangerous creature, and it is always your birthday. Patrons get it a week early here: www.patreon.com/posts/138800...

GREAT NEWS. You are a GOAT GIRL and it is ALWAYS YOUR BIRTHDAY. You are having a joint birthday/war party with the other goat girls and no-one is going to stop you.

drawing of a goat girl what I did. she is bursting out of a multi-tiered birthday cake (it is unclear whether it is the type of cake you are suppose to burst out of) and she is holding a small hammer

VIOLENT DELIGHTS
Goat girls cannot die, nor suffer serious harm. (It is their birthday.) Goat girls can be captured and/or confined, but this state of affairs rarely lasts for long. Any death or injury they inflict (a frequent occurrence) happens slightly off-screen, or out-of-focus in the background of a different scene.

a small goat girl carrying a club what I drew

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Paolo of Lost Pages 🧙‍♀️ witchy season @lostpages.co.uk · 21/09/2025

The best RPG has been made, we can all go home and rest now.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

I have big news! I've launched a Patreon for the Hex setting, including monthly maps, fully-illustrated installments of the Hex Guidebook, a playtest version of The Hex Hack system, and an archive of older high-resolution maps. Subscribe here: www.patreon.com/c/beardeddevil

patreon.com

Bearded Devil | Patreon

Fantasy roleplaying games and maximalist maps.

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Bran 9 From Outer Space @bransonreese.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

We need to stop calling the four humors thing "pseudoscience." There's too much evidence for it in culture, it's real.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Minitower, wake and bake, acid-washed, contact trace, Patient zero, thirtysomething, beta-amyloid. Yuppie flu, guanciale, steampunk punditocracy, Pravastatin, lovastatin, off-label lipo.

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Paolo of Lost Pages 🧙‍♀️ witchy season @lostpages.co.uk · 15/08/2025

I made a couple of little videos for the Pergamino Barocco kickstarter. Have a look at the Red Prototype as it... unfolds? www.kickstarter.com/projects/los...

youtube.com

Pergamino Barocco - the Red Prototype

YouTube video by Lost Pages Books

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Paolo of Lost Pages 🧙‍♀️ witchy season @lostpages.co.uk · 08/08/2025

"Wings of Talent, Stone of Necessity" is one of the strange spells in our next strange spellbook, Pergamino Barocco. www.kickstarter.com/projects/los...

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merr-itt came from outer space @merrittk.com · 24/08/2025

socialist vampires. that's it, that's the pitch. that's what my book is about merrittk.itch.io/vampirocene

merrittk.itch.io

Vampirocene by merritt k

A climate horror novella

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

Bill's game Restore the Warp has a very cool loose setting with a lot of great quirks, like a plethora of terraformed planets dating back so far no one is quite sure which of them is Earth and a planet that got cut in half. Lots of procedural mechanics for generating worlds and scenarios on the fly.

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Bill (he/him) @billtherad.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

The ashcan for my science fantasy ttrpg is public! Fight an interstellar invasion and heal the god of the stars in Restore the Warp: Ashcan Edition! billtherad.itch.io/restore-the-...

billtherad.itch.io

Restore the Warp: Ashcan Edition by billtherad

cosmic drama, personal struggles

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Omne Vivum Ex Ovo. A dungeon I'm working on for students at my college. A few of its levels pictured here.

A gigantic egg-like structure suspended above an abyss in a cavernous underground chamber, four bridges leading to it, a strange base-camp of tents to one side, a fungal infestation to the other. Doorways pierce its biomechanoid shell, part of which has been corrupted by some seething organic growth writhing with tendrils and fanged mouths. It's all very Lovecraftian but in a sort of whimsical way, like if Shel Silverstein was illustrating The Shadow Out of Time.

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Rise Up (From the Grave) Comus @riseupcomus.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

My friend made a completely diegetic book on blood magic. 230 pages of magic, theory, and lore 3 world maps detailing the setting 33 blood sorcery rituals + magical circle diagrams 135 illustrations & 24 diagrams 3 unique runic alphabets 3 historical timelines + a detailed family tree IT'S FREE

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Ben L @benlaurence.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Love me an underwater dungeon!

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Gormenghast for me, I think. Like, it's also a favourite but it's got so much in it. The Gothic, yes - dust and cobwebs and horror and murder and ruins. But also it's fantastic, otherworldly, it creates a different world. And then there's the language itself, ridiculously maximalist and ornate.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Strangely omits that according to the graph, the natural sciences are apparently the least comprehensible, historically and now, while the humanities are consistently the clearest. If the data are correct, and if jargon overuse is indeed a problem, the sciences ought to learn from the humanities.

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Jonathan Newell @edweirdian.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Dungeons are crime scenes and the adventurers are detectives.

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girl with Shinigami eyes @diyanddragons.bsky.social · 22/01/2024

Shortly before TTRPG designer Jennell Jaquays died, OSR blogger Justin Alexander, who once named Jennell's dungeon drawing techniques after her, started trying to erase her legacy, and rename that style after himself. I reject Justin's bad faith arguments for this, and celebrate Jaquaysian design.

diyanddragons.blogspot.com

Xandering is Slandering

On January 10, 2024, the game designer Jennell Jaquays died. She was a woman of many accomplishments, who published one of the earliest and ...

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