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rooted in blogs, linked in a ringA Knight at the Opera · linked by the ring
Posts by A Knight at the Opera that other blogs in the ring have linked.
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Artist credit: Katie HicksDolmenwood is now a big deal. But it was a journey to get here. It was originally conceived as a setting by Gavin Norman and Greg Gorgonmilk around...Linked by the ring
- Mythic Bastionland: Nu-OSR Encapsulated? Dénes Szántó
- The Electrum Archive is Prescription Medication Valeria Loves
- The Electrum Archive is Prescription Medication Valeria Loves
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- Kelpsprot Session 8 The Dododecahedron
- Kelpsprot Sessions 6 & 7 The Dododecahedron
- Kelpsprot Session 5 The Dododecahedron
- Kelpsprot Sessions 2-4 The Dododecahedron
- Kelpsprot Session 1 The Dododecahedron
- Appendix K The Dododecahedron
- Kelpsprot Origins The Dododecahedron
- Fixing Dungeon Crawls. Or, Playing the World Press the Beast
- In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, There Is Only Cringe (The Night Land Review) Idraluna Archives
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Not really. But maybe, with your help, we actually can. Let's give this a shot.Every now and then I've seen a blog post attempting to cover this topic and they always just seem...Linked by the ring
- Breaking a GM star pattern: d20 more ways A shrike for my dreams
- disassembling sentinel comics Fluorite Guillotine
- final fantasy tactics could have been a ttrpg Fluorite Guillotine
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- All Along the Clocktower Prismatic Wasteland
- The Electrum Archive is Prescription Medication Valeria Loves
- The Electrum Archive is Prescription Medication Valeria Loves
- 2025 Benign Brown Beast
- 2025 Year-in-Review Blog of Forlorn Encystment
- Da BEST initiative: Chaos sandwich! A shrike for my dreams
- boss relative: telegraphs & radial positioning Fluorite Guillotine
- Death in the Dark - Meaningful Torchlight and Light-based Initiative Beneath Foreign Planets
- full metal bones: initiative Fluorite Guillotine
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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...Linked by the ring
- Around the Blogosphere in 80 Days (Blogwagon Roundup) Prismatic Wasteland
- The Most BROKEN Class in AD&D!?!?!? Magnolia Keep
- Patchwork Newsletter (Vol 2, Issue 10) Patchwork Paladin
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- CATMAIL #2 AMONG CATS AND BOOKS
- The Explorateur: Issue #17 Explorers Design
- Black Fang's Dungeon: A Masterclass of Design Magnolia Keep
- Stationery & Maps Traverse Fantasy
- The Player-Drawn Dungeon Map is a Fast Travel Hack Blog of Forlorn Encystment
- Shiny TTRPG links #264 Seed of Worlds
- The 46er - February 2026 Table 46
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I have a hypothesis: Wizards of the Coast's 5E adventures are for fucking weenies.I know, it's a tall claim to make. Let's prove this through rigorous scientific...Linked by the ring
- Daggerheart - a Dishonest Review (full of Lies) Valeria Loves
- Daggerheart - a Dishonest Review (full of Lies) Valeria Loves
- The Bloggies Hall of Fame Explorers Design
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- Review + Actual Play: Winters Daughter Seed of Worlds
- Capsule Reviews #8: Recent Old School Adventures Seed of Worlds
- The Demon of Dogwater Gulch Pre-Postmortem Gordian Blade
- The Winners of the 2022 Bloggies Prismatic Wasteland
- Bloggies 2022: Voting Begins Prismatic Wasteland
- Shiny TTRPG links #95 Seed of Worlds
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This is a mistake I've seen many people make when discussing rules and content and stuff like that. Here it is: game design and level design are two different things. There's a...Linked by the ring
- Structures and Procedures Ladino's Rogue Thoughts
- People Walk Too Fast Valeria Loves
- d6 Setpiece Encounter Spices Random Ape Encounter
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- Developing the Sandbox: Dungeons Blog of Forlorn Encystment
- Daggerheart - a Dishonest Review (full of Lies) Valeria Loves
- Daggerheart - a Dishonest Review (full of Lies) Valeria Loves
- RPG Difficulty and Punishment Levers Random Ape Encounter
- Gamemasters are Game Designers! Afraid of Encounters
- Bite-Sized Dungeons Traverse Fantasy
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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...Linked by the ring
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Hey! if you were linked here from elsewhere, this version is outdated. Please read this one instead.[EDIT: I've replaced this post because it's not very good. When I wrote it,...Linked by the ring
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[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...Linked by the ring
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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...Linked by the ring
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Who's ready for another stupidly long post? That's the spirit!The "Skill Challenge" is an interesting type of generalist gameplay procedure that's not a core experience of many...Linked by the ring
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Because apparently this is a 5E blog now, I'm going to talk about the Gritty Realism variant rule suggested in the DMG on page 267. But wait! Don't go! You know me better than...Linked by the ring
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This was easily the funniest picture I found for "Edition Wars"People have short memories.Actually, that's only part of it. People also need tribalism, and tribalism needs...Linked by the ring
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The Free City of GreyhawkArtist credit: Valerie ValusekHey! If you've been linked here, I recommend you read this later series of blog posts instead. Trust me, it's much...Linked by the ring
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Feel free to dismiss everything I say here as just the mad ramblings of a man in the middle of a meltdown. If you want a quick explanation, you can always just say "Dwiz is a...
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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...Linked by the ring
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Here's a course-correction that I wish had happened a decade ago. It's an idea surrounding the OSR that I wouldn't call a misconception, exactly, but is definitely missing out...Linked by the ring
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You know what I'm talking about. "The pirate campaign." "The wavecrawl." A "saltbox." "Maritime adventures." A notoriously elusive type of D&D campaign, for reasons fathomable...
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As you know, I quite like D&D 5E. Hopefully I was able to illuminate some of its positive qualities that you may have overlooked. But let's be honest. This is the moment you've...
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This post has some required reading: a blog post from Swedish designer (?) Sandra Snan called Blorb Principles.[By the way, Sandra's blog is absolutely bonkers. She's written...Linked by the ring
- Play Is Canon Prismatic Wasteland
- CATMAIL #1 AMONG CATS AND BOOKS
- Own Personal Blorb/AntiBlorb Seed of Worlds
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A lot of people put all games on a simple spectrum of "less crunch" to "more crunch," where the amount of crunchiness is measured roughly by "the number of discrete rules you...Linked by the ring
- Not all prep is the same Ladino's Rogue Thoughts
- Shiny TTRPG links #286 Seed of Worlds
- On Completeness Writings
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I sure do talk a lot about the needs of "simulation," huh? Truly the least interesting approach to design. But my defense of simulationism is a topic for another day. Instead,...
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Alternative series title: My (Frequently Tested, Yet Still Dubious) Theory of Urban GameplayApparently it's been too long since I last wrote about settlements in D&D (and...
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You've probably noticed me blogging a lot more about 5E lately. And if you've read any of that, you'll know I that I have pretty complicated feelings towards it.It's still my...
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Before we get started, I swear I'm not a sociopath.I don't think of NPCs in the same way that most other GMs do. If you're new to the hobby, you'll find no shortage of tips and...
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Much has been made of the weird underlying assumptions of general "liberal American capitalism" woven throughout mainstream D&D economics gameplay. It's called "anachronistic"...
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Alternatively titled, "How to Have Your Cake and Eat it Too."There is a commonly recognized dichotomy of gamers who like linear, "scene-based" games where the DM is a...
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Credit: Ralph HorsleySo you're trying to make your ultimate citycrawl procedure anyway. And right there, you've already run into the second problem. You assumed that it should...
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You've heard the good, the messy, and the annoying. But here in our grand finale? These are the real reasons I haven't run a 5E game in years. The stuff that makes me sometimes...Linked by the ring
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"Go on in, it's okay. You can see him."The Dungeon Master was frozen at the door. He was nervous for what he'd find on the other side. But that was his player in there. His...
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This year, my friend Ty is taking his blog mindstormpress.com on tour, and I'm lucky enough to be honored with one of his highly-prized articles. I've said some pretty harsh...
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I'm gunna be a little self-indulgent and quote myself.Every piece of crunch you add has a cost. A cost in how much brainpower it takes to learn, to teach, to remember, to use....
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Mystery scenarios are probably the second-most popular genre of gameplay in RPGs after dungeoncrawling. Despite this, quite frustratingly, most detective-y games don't provide...Linked by the ring
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Poster for Possession (1981) by Basha AKA mythic Polishgraphic artist Barbara Baranowska.Long ago, in ages past, I warned you there'd be more art posts. Today you get to see my...Linked by the ring
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As I'm sure you well know, not all crunch is the same. It can be broadly useful to know if you generally prefer less crunch or more crunch. But it helps a lot to feel out the...Linked by the ring
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D&D didn't forget about or abandon followers, flunkies, and lackies. They merely evolved. Adapted to selection pressures, now built for a different ecosystem. Now D&D has...Linked by the ring
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If you only ever listened to annoying AD&D fanboys, you might think that the OSR is strictly about crawling through big megadungeons as sword and sorcery murderhobos. But no...
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I recently had a very novel experience running a game that I think has some potential that ought to be explored. Maybe someone out there has done this sort of thing and would...
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Artist Credit: Wayne ReynoldsThis is a spiritual sequel to a previous post about crunch. Everyone uses the word "balance" in reference to something in RPGs but they frequently...Linked by the ring
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Okay I'm sure that isn't true of all of you. But statistically speaking, it's probably true of you. Because I have never once met another GM who can run a game they say will be...
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TL;DR: here's a link to a rough draft procedure I've made for hacking gameplay[INTRUSION DETECTED: EPIC HAX0R AVA WAS HERE]Today I will once again be speaking confidently on a...Linked by the ring
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The "Mythic Underworld" is a term popular in the OSR that was (probably) coined by Trent Smith and then popularized through an essay by Jason Cone in Philotomy's Musings. Cone...
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I have bigger, better articles in the works but I noticed my output has slowed down, so back into the vaults I go. I've dug up this list from many years ago and adapted it....Linked by the ring
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After my last face-meltingly long post compiling every variation on Skill Challenges (SC) out there, it's time to do a critical analysis of this concept. When I started this...Linked by the ring
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Obviously, the in-game experience for game masters and players is very different from one another. But something I think about a lot is how the out-of-game experience of RPGs,...Linked by the ring
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This is going to be a fraught post and I'm not sure I'll articulate everything I mean to clearly. That's not meant as a shield, it's just the truth. I'll try my best though. I...Linked by the ring
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We don't actually have the numbers of how popular Model UN (MUN) is but we can reasonably guess there's as many as 180,000 people who participate in it just in the United...
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In the most recent Questing Beast Q&A he and his guests gave their thoughts of "ideal dungeon size" and it got me thinking. Here's a link to the part of the video where they...
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No TL;DR but I'll just tell you that the good shit is the misc. list at the end Something you hear a lot in RPG spaces is the recurring lamentation of, "no one wants to try...Linked by the ring
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D&D is a chance to share a world with people. So after an adventure, you probably want your players to remember the setting it took place it. The experience of being...Linked by the ring
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Let’s do some more DIY D&D and hack the rules. I’m going to introduce to you my favorite and most important houserule: Advanced Darkness. Overview Why do we come up with...