rootring
rooted in blogs, linked in a ringNick Hendriks
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On the ring since 2026-04-02
Latest activity 4w ago
46 posts
Earlier
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Havoc Brigade I love this game. I'm admittedly a Grant Howitt fanboy (possibly to an obnoxious degree) but I think I can look at this game objectively and still say that it is...
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UPDATED April 8th 2026: In retrospect I decided I didn't care for how I was handling armour for the Automatons. My design goal was to encourage players to seek situational...
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Over the last few years at work we've shifted into tracking work on a quarterly basis. Hardly revolutionary for many workplaces, but it was a shift in thinking for me. I've...
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In the previous session of my solo All-Out Apocalypse game the party finally entered the water park in the West Edmonton Mall, where they hoped to find some chlorine to solve...
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This post is a part of December's blog carnival: The End Times and After: December 2025 RPG Blog Carnival Recently I wrote new vehicle rules for my All-Out Apocalypse game...Linked by the ring
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As seems to be my way, it has been approximately FOREVER since I last played this solo game. I'm hopeful that I remember how any of this works. Last time: The gang got into a...
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Photo credit: thomashendele I've been running this West Marches game for a while now. I've posted about it before. One of the key elements of a game of this sort is a random...
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I've had a busy summer and my autumn does not promise to be any different, so my blogging habit has fallen by the wayside. I'm not sure I had much to contribute to many of the...Linked by the ring
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I read far too many articles offering guidance on how to reduce the amount of time spent prepping for ttrpgs. Ridiculous!! If you are anything like me, you can never have...
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This is a mechanic I think might be interesting in a game where combat should feel punishing, and winning a battle does not guarantee your safety. Every time you take damage,...
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You are so small and the world is so big! Lucky for you a mighty steed awaits, its chitin glossy and vibrant. Choose or roll for three traits (re-roll incompatible results):...
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Just a brief thought. It occurred to me recently that I've probably been looking at factions through the wrong end of the microscope. I find the concept of factions to be an...
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The West Marches gameplay style gives us a structural conceit: Start in Town, End in Town. It exists to satisfy the format's real-world need for players to be available for...
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I've posted on this blog about my piratey West Marches game before. In typical OSR fashion I've hacked together my own custom set of rules to suit this game, and it's ever a...
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Smudge Industries performed some kind of chemistry in the Before Times. Today it is surrounded by pools of multicolour slime. Reaching the building on foot requires navigating...
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Have you ever wanted to run a secret agent spy thriller game but you couldn't come up with a cool story concept? Move over Clive Cussler! We're going to make up our own...
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Last time: Three androids were waking up. Fly was set up to start shooting as soon as the androids caused trouble. Altivo was trying to steal shotguns. Baby was trying to...
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It's been ages since I ran session 1 of this game, so I'm going to do my best to pick up where I left off. I may forget a few things. To begin with I cannot remember how many...
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In session 0 we established a party and a quest: Fly, Altivo, and Baby must find chlorine or something similar within the bowels of the Blood-Bird infested West Edmonton Mall....
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Inspired by Lone Horizons, I've decided to do some solo roleplaying using my Fallout knockoff rules-light system and record what happens as I go. I'm not confident enough to...
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Goblins come out of rocks. They've been there since nearly the beginning of time, when the world was fire and Chaos, before Order got to grips with things. The world cooled,...
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DISCLAIMER: This is not a fully developed idea, just musing. I advise skipping it if you're looking for something actionable. This is going to seem like I'm doing it out of...
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Idea: A hidden network of social influence which players must navigate in order to gain the trust or attention of someone influential. Imagine this: your party is visiting The...
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That's right, I pre-roll them, and I won't apologize for it. It gives me more time to think about how to make the results cool. I'm running a West Marches game (I've talked...
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I love to categorize stuff to make my life easier when running exploration tabletop games. Today I'm thinking about pointcrawl paths and their characteristics. Three key...
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This was a direct continuation of my previous playtest with some new rules adjustments. PlayersMy brother, playing Fast-Hands Finn My daughter, playing Brute Melee Character...
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PlayersMy brother, playing two characters at once, Harry and Harriet Character CreationCharacter Creation went as smoothly as could be expected. My brother did not have time to...Linked by the ring
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Start with the fiction of the game. Find or design a fun encounter map. Include some great NPCs. These standard pieces of advice apply, but are not specific to this design...
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I read this fantastic post over at elmc.at about managing factions in a sandbox game today and just love it. It's not wildly dissimilar to the simple faction system I've been...
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A short one, and obvious to most I'm sure. It can be difficult, I think, to know when to break the rules when you're playing a new system. What rolls are important and which...