Mana Meltdown

What is this?

Mana Meltdown is a high-stakes psionic battle royale adventure

Outwit elite telekinetic treasure hunters in a lethal dungeon crawl. Race through a shrinking tomb of shifting geometry. Uncover secrets that death itself has sent a bureaucratic blood agent to erase. 

Mana Meltdown will include:

• An Aerial Race - Dash aboard a dragonfly to the tomb over the geometric desert 
• A Dungeon That Thinks - It becomes more aware of you the deeper you go 
• Hunt and Ensnare - Capture arcane constructs intact, or they’re worthless to the Hermit Queen
• Mind Against Mind - A lethal psionic deathmatch with rival bounty hunters
• A Delve Through the Eye of a Needle - Descend through keyholes within keyholes
• A Dynamic Timeline of Events - A simple structured flowchart to guide the DM
• Random Effects Tables - Obscure spells, anomalies, and shifting conditions
• Prompts and Resolutions - Consequences and outcomes for players' actions 
• Optional Hooks - Rumors, secrets, and backgrounds for your players to work with
• The Artificer’s Ghost – A scheming, out-of-phase heretic who watches from between worlds
• Sentient Traps

The Zine

The Artificer is dead! The Hermit Queen has dispatched you on the royal dragonfly to seize his arcane weapons before her enemies do. Deep in the geometric desert, the Azoic Artificer's tower is unraveling: traps are gaining sentience, micro dimensions are fusing, and a ticking mana reactor whispers on the brink of collapse. The meltdown will soon sink the tower into churning cubic sands. If you fail, another kingdom will use the weapons to rule for centuries.

Construction: 

• 100 gsm paper, staple bound with matte laminated cardstock cover
• Trim size: 5.5” x 8.5”
• Mostly black and white with selective use of color
• 32 + pages
• The PDF will have hyperlinks and bookmarks

Mana Meltdown is a scenario designed for old school essentials, based on the 1980s Basic/Expert rules. You can grab a free pdf of the starter rules here. But Mana Meltdowncan can easily be used with many other similar old school game systems.

The adventure is designed for characters level 4-6, but there will be a section to help you tune the difficulty for your party size and level.

The Zine Bundle

Get Four Dark Fantasy Zines: Scroll down to the add-ons section for details on what's inside each zine. Drop them into your sandbox, mine them for homebrew inspiration, or run them as a mini-campaign:

1. Willow – A perfect starting location.
2. The Toxic Wood – A deadly follow-up quest.
3. Mana Meltdown – A high-stakes finale.
4. The Haunted Hamlet – Four modular locations for side quests or filling map gaps.

The Dark Fantasy Bundle

Get everything - two books, four zines, and five art prints. Drop them into your world or run an entire campaign. Scroll down to the add-on section for more information on each of these modules. 

1. Wind Wraith (146-page hardcover): A nautical toolkit that generates islands, monsters, NPCs, factions, and more. Infinite exploration on the high seas.
2. Woodfall (92-page softcover): A thriving outlaw town, perfect for the player's base of operations, beside an infested swamp to hexcrawl.
3. Four Zines – Deadly dungeons, a starting village, corrupted woods, and modular locations to fuel a string of adventures.
4. Five Art Prints – Each with bonus content to scatter across your world.

Original Art

If you pledge at this level, you get an original hand-drawn piece of artwork mailed to you. Check out the selection in the gallery links below. First come, first served. I will send you a message when it's your turn in the queue to make your selection.

Click here to view the large original art gallery (€175 tier) 

Click here to view the small original art gallery (€60 tier)

Please note that not all of these pieces are from Mana Meltdown- most are from previous projects. If someone ahead of you in the queue snatched the art you wanted, you can always downgrade your pledge. If you change from Large to Small art (or vice versa) you will be put to the bottom of the queue. Shipping is included in your pledge and all art will be shipped rolled up in tubes, so it can take a day or two to be flattened out again, but this helps avoid damage in transport.

Add Ons

Grab copies of my previous works as print or PDF add-ons. 

Wind Wraith is a 146-page hardcover book. This setting toolkit helps you generate your own fantasy post-apocalypse ocean world, complete with scattered islands, factions, ships, and ancient arcane machines. Play as the descendants of the survivors of a great flood, explorers in a fallen world, as they build and upgrade their ship and crew. Attempt to unravel the mysteries of the past and survive with limited resources. Wind Wraith was made for the old school essentials rule system but can easily be converted to many other rule systems. 

The Toxic Wood is a 32-page black and white zine. A deadly wilderness adventure for Old School Essentials. This hexcrawl adventure focuses on gameable content and is easy to use at the table. It is graphic and art heavy and utilizes a lot of random tables to make it easier for GMs to run with minimal prep.

Woodfall is a 92-page black and white softcover book that contains a system-neutral dark fantasy mini-setting. Explore a fairytale setting, wade through a misty swamp, get caught up in the fighting between warring monster clans, discover a strange town of witches and thieves, and search for forgotten treasure.

Willow is a 36-page single color zine that contains a village that can be dropped into your campaign setting. Structured as a mini hexcrawl, players will have to work together to investigate a mystery to move on from a damp backwater village to bigger, brighter places. Willow works particularly well as a starting location, but can be plugged into your world anywhere you could use a provincial settlement.

The Haunted Hamlet is a 32-page black and white zine that details four locations. These modular hex locations focus on gameable content and easy use at the table. The locations are not connected to one another and can be sprinkled onto your campaign map however you like or run as one shots.

The four locations are:

• The Gold Mine
• The Haunted Hamlet
• The Ladder Inn
• The Hat Cult's Hideout

Who Am I?

I'm Lazy Litch - a reclusive undead artist from Ireland, currently haunting Sweden. I write, illustrate, and layout everything you see on this page. With the funds from this campaign, I hope to advance my research on growing minions from adventurers' stem cells to guard my lair.

What the other dungeon dwellers are saying:

Fulfillment

Shipping is not included in your pledge (unless you back at the original art tier)

Shipping will be added later in backerkit. This will help me accurately price shipping costs at the time of fulfillment and allow more flexibility around add-ons. 

PDFs will be fulfilled via Backerkit, DriveThruRPG & Itch.io 
 

Shipping Estimates: 


USA:

• Mana Meltdown Zine: $3
• Zine Bundle: $5
• Dark Fantasy Bundle: $10

Canada:

• Mana Meltdown Zine: $5
• Zine Bundle: $15
• Dark Fantasy Bundle: $20

Everywhere else:

• Mana Meltdown Zine: $6
• Zine Bundle: $20
• Dark Fantasy Bundle: $25

Retailers

If you're a retailer looking to stock Mana Meltdown or any of my titles then you can contact me directly at lazylitch@gmail.com