Artist credit: Jeffrey HummelGamers suck at talking about difficulty. It's one of those topics that somehow never produces a good conversation. It's mired in bizarre value...

Because I know that nobody reading this right now has ever read the D&D 5.0 Dungeon Master's Guide, that also means you almost certainly don't know about one of its best...

About a year ago I played through Fire Emblem 7 for the first time. I got through the tutorial a couple times as a kid, but for some reason I never moved on to the main...

Dungeons & Dragons began as a game about exploring mazes, trying not to get lost as you navigate spaces with complicated layouts. At some point, these conventions fell to the...

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZCredit: John BauerAlready covered previously: Nightmare and Nymph. Probably should have...

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZCredit: Joe Sparrow, from Dungeons & DrawingsStrap in, because there are a lot of M monsters....

I had been playing RPGs for many years before I ever even considered getting into homebrew. Of course, I wasn't against homebrew. I routinely took homemade gameable content...

I started this blog 6 years ago. Here was the last retrospective. It contains the origin story and some badly-aged advice.In the time since then, A Knight at the Opera has...

[NOTE: I originally wrote this review back in 2023 as a guest post for Bones of Contention, a critic collective comprised of many of the best RPG bloggers out there. This...

This post is part of the "Appendix N" blog bandwagon. I decided to share some of the many influences that have shaped a game I've been working on for a few years called Tricks...

[Context for this post: this is a re-write of an old post of mine I wrote back in 2021. I wasn't happy with my explanation, and it's filled with errors, but people link to it...

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZCredit: Mike MignolaHey, happy 200th post, Knight at the Opera. Now let's populate this digital...

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZCredit: Richard WhittersK monsters are all plundered from various cultures around the world,...

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZCredit: this comicUhhh... yeah, so I guess this is basically the only major "J" monster in D&D's...

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZCredit: Prem (aka Coool Brain)Been quite a while since the last one of these, huh? Sorry about...

This is my tier list for "ways that board games end." Either the trigger for the ending or the way you evaluate the results or whatever. Anything having to do with the ending...

"Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot."You have likely seen or been recommended the newest episode of...

Continuing my posts about The Seven-Part Pact (7PP) and some of its nifty mechanical design ideas, I want to discuss this game's approach to authority.This is, of course, a...

Continuing my posts about The Seven-Part Pact (7PP) and some of its nifty mechanical design ideas, I want to discuss this game's approach to consequences.Jay has often...

Continuing my posts about The Seven-Part Pact (7PP) and some of its nifty mechanical design ideas, I want to discuss the rules for combat.I've already talked about this a bit...

Continuing my posts about The Seven-Part Pact (7PP) and some of its nifty mechanical design ideas, I want to discuss the rules for Companions.It is well known that Wizards are...

We sometimes joke that blogging is a method of exorcism for the game design demons inside us. And right now, I'm possessed by the demon called Legion, for it is many. That's...

After collecting as many initiative methods into one post as I possibly could, I offered to write a review of them. A few people were interested, and I like having an excuse to...

This is a follow-up to that one previous post. I'm glad to see it's been received pretty positively, and that I've gotten lots of suggestions for additions. One year on, I've...

I recently had the privilege to take part in an in-person playtest session of The Seven-Part Pact, the upcoming game by Jay Dragon.The Seven-Part Pact is a game for seven...

Credit: Alan LeeThis is a post about a very subtle facet of spotlight management. I consider it to be one of the most important techniques a GM needs to master, and is very...

This is a post about our wuxia game that's currently in development. You can check it out here.Pertinent to this post, I've also released the beta version of the Catalogue of...

This is a post about our wuxia game that's currently in development. You can check it out here.Every player needs a character sheet and a copy of the cheat sheet. Click those...