In a world where AIs are creating content, making decisions and deciding what to promote, we hope we’re all doing something different with the RPG Publisher Spotlight.

Our patrons voted Arcane Brewery as the honouree of the November Spotlight. A people-powered decision.

Last month we launched a secret nominations process. This month, we received more nominations than we can list in a single post. This has never happened before! Hang in there. If you nominated someone and do not see them below, then please check back in December and, actually, January too! We’ve had a lot of suggestions, and it’s a great sign.

Nominations are free. Let’s now feature the patrons who get to vote and make all this possible!

This month we offer thanks to; Daryle Landers, Jake @ Faded Quill Gaming, Sean P Kelley, Philippe Marcil, Adept Icarus, Noril of Cold River, R Waibel, Allen Varney, Kate, Paul Wilson, and Heike.

We have last month’s feature on Slithy Tove live, and patrons can vote for one of December’s candidates in this private poll.

Here are the choices for December’s RPG Publisher Spotlight vote.

• Armored Storyteller Publishing
• Weird Adventures by Martin A. Cubas
• The Obsidian Die
• Mindplaces
• The Northern Realm Inc.

To use your vote and your Patreon membership, visit this patrons-only page.

Typically, if you’ve read this far then I try and make sure there’s some extra value as a thank you. I’ve taken this monthly space to sometimes share my world-building or TTRPG tips and thoughts, and this time around, having been beaten by some storms, I’ve been thinking about the Wild Hunt.

Riding the Gale: Running the Wild Hunt as environmental dread

The Wild Hunt is fundamentally an agrarian nightmare of sudden exposure, unyielding seasonal change, and the storm’s violent indifference. Across northern and western Europe, folklore transformed the sound of autumnal gales roaring through bare canopies into a spectral cavalcade: the Scandinavian Asgardsrei, the Welsh Cŵn Annwn, and the English Dewer’s Rake.

In our world, these legends explained the terror of dark nights, shifting weather patterns, and the sudden disappearance of solitary travellers on moorland ridgelines. Here in Scotland, by the water and trees, I feel it strongly. In tabletop roleplaying games, where supernatural beings are an established reality, the Hunt stops being a mere combat encounter and becomes a catastrophic, seasonal force of nature that shapes rural culture, architecture, and survival.

Real-World Mythology: The anatomy of a spectral gale

Historical accounts of the Hunt across Europe share consistent motifs rooted in winter survival and acoustic terror.

Agrarian communities conceived the Hunt to process distinct survival anxieties: livestock straying into killing blizzards, early frosts destroying stored crops, and the disorienting howl of wind through ancient woods. To look upon the Hunt was either to be blinded, struck dumb, or hauled into the saddle as fresh quarry.

The Reality Shift: Life beneath an active sky

In a setting where fairies, fey courts, and undead riders exist, agrarian populations do not treat the Hunt as a bedtime story. They treat it like a hurricane with a malice-driven consciousness.

Rural architecture and defensive custom

• Windowless North Walls: Homesteads and barns are built without windows facing prevailing autumn winds or ridgelines to prevent wandering gazes.
• Ridge Tiles and Iron Pegs: Roof timbers are pegged with cold iron, and turf ridges are soaked in sheep’s blood or salt brine at Martinmas to stop the host from tearing off thatch.
• Sunken Wayfarer Shelters: Roadsides feature shallow stone ditches or timber crawlspaces covered in brush, built specifically so travellers caught out after twilight can wedge themselves flat beneath the wind.
• The Silence Mandate: Speaking above a whisper outdoors after twilight during the dark half of the year is treated as local endangerment; calling someone by their true name while outside draws the hounds’ attention.

Superstitious paranoia vs. practical reality

Commoners distinguish sharply between standard apex predators and the Hunt:

• Tithe Animals: Farmers deliberately leave one runt pig or lame sheep tied to a crossroad stake at the start of November. If the stake is clean by morning, the farmstead has paid its seasonal transit tax.
• The False Horn: Bandits, rogue warlocks, and cults exploit Hunt folklore by blowing rams’ horns during night storms to drive isolated hamlets into shuttered silence while they raid outbuildings unchecked.
• The Missing: When a villager goes missing during a November gale, communities do not mount search parties. Setting foot on the moor while the scent is fresh is seen as volunteering to join the pack.

Statting the Wild Hunt in TTRPG systems

Running the Hunt works best when the players cannot simply stand and fight it with standard initiative rolls. It should function as a pursuit, a skill challenge, or an escalating environmental crisis.

Old-School Essentials / OSR Systems

• The Morale of Beasts: Pack animals and mounts must make an immediate Morale check at -2 whenever distant horns sound. Failure means they bolt straight into deep bogs, ditching wagons and gear.
• Retainers and Panicked Fleeing: Hirelings must save vs. Spells or cast down their torches and flee blindly. Torches are visible from miles away on barren moors, acting as beacons for hound packs.
• Exposure Over Combat: Treat the Hunt’s vanguard as an encounter that inflicts automatic cold and exhaustion damage rather than melee attacks. The goal is to break line of sight, find dead ground, or conceal light sources before the vanguard closes distance.

Dungeons & Dragons 5e

• The Acoustic Inversion Hazard: Borrowing from Welsh folklore, passive Perception checks function in reverse: DC 10 Perception identifies the hounds miles away. If the hounds are within 60 feet, the baying drops to an absolute whisper, requiring a DC 18 Perception check to notice the silent rush through the mist.
• The Ride-Along Trap: Any character who fails a DC 15 Charisma or Wisdom saving throw after looking directly at the lead huntsman is subjected to an uncontrollable compulsion to match their pace, taking 3d6 psychic damage per round until physically restrained or knocked prone.

Call of Cthulhu / Delta Green

• SAN Loss from Incomprehensible Scale: Witnessing hundreds of riders galloping without touching the ground costs 1/1d8 SAN.
• Bystander Guilt: When hiding in a roadside barn, investigators hear the frantic pounding of a terrified villager on the timber door outside. Opening the door risks exposing the safe house to the pack; ignoring the pounding requires a 1/1d4 SAN check as the screaming suddenly ascends straight into the storm clouds.

Three tabletop encounters

1. The Low-Road Standoff

The party takes shelter in a fortified wayside inn during a sudden late-autumn gale. At midnight, the hounds bay outside, but cannot cross the threshold due to iron nails driven into the lintel. A panicked local merchant breaks from their room and tries to unbar the heavy oak doors, raving that their runaway child is crying outside in the paddock. The party has two combat rounds to subdue the merchant before the latch lifts and cold wind floods the room.

2. The Broken Wheel on Dead Ridge

While escorting a sensitive cargo wagon across an exposed moor, an axle snaps just as the first horn sounds over the crest behind them. The riders are three miles away and closing fast. Players must choose what to ditch to lighten the load, determine whether to sacrifice draft horses to throw off the scent, or find a natural peat crevice large enough to wedge themselves face-down into the mud until the thunderous hooves pass overhead.

3. The Unwanted Mount

A riderless, coal-black horse breaks through the storm and stops directly in front of an exhausted character during a wilderness escape. The steed is saddled, stirruped, and completely calm despite the howling wind. Mounting the steed grants instantaneous flight and escapes the ground hazard, but the saddle is cursed: the reins fuse to the rider’s gauntlets, and the horse immediately turns around to rejoin the vanguard as its newest whipper-in.