rootring
rooted in blogs, linked in a ringIdraluna Archives
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On the ring since 2026-05-26
Latest activity 15mo ago
157 posts
Earlier
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For the Antarctic Adventure Jam I'm working on keying ~950 hexes. I've been hand-stocking (a departure from my usual approach) and have taken this as an opportunity to test...Linked by the ring
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I wrote a dervish lair for the OD&D Discord's one-page lair contest. Though probably intended to evoke some kind of chauvinist caricature of Sudanese Mahdist rebels, dervishes...
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While playing around with speculative Antarctica maps, I've been trying to keep notes on other worldbuilding projects & fantasies involving Antarctica.1 Since the Antarctic...
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I don't know if any author has fumbled a great premise as hard as this. The GoodUntold aeons in the future, the sun & stars have guttered out and the last remnants of humanity...
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Since publishing The Great Antarctic Hexcrawl on itch, a few people have expressed interest in a game jam to fill it with adventures, so without further ado, here's a link to...
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There's lots to love & hate about Geoffrey Mckinney's Carcosa, but one feature that never fails to ignite my imagination is the bizarre naming convention used for high-level...Linked by the ring
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Got the itch to do more speculative cartography, so for the last week or two I've been simulating the weather on the Moon, if it had an earth-like atmosphere. Is this even...
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My impression is that minis aren't a big part of OSR culture, except for an incidental affinity as nerd hobbies. Indeed, in the rare cases when theater of the mind isn't...
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What is this?A very simple death & dismemberment system for OD&D or other old-school/OSR games that use hit dice. TL;DRWhen an attack reduces a character below 0 HP, calculate...
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This one is from a duet session with one player controlling four characters. Start Date: 1/20/1025 End Date: 1/20/1025 Members of the expedition: Alex Muskabadon, veteran;...
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Start Date: 1/18/1025 End Date: 1/18/1025 Members of the expedition: Ronald Kronkle, acolyte; Altruism Johnston, conjurer; Lyra Falsehood, seer; Leslie Meow, conjurer, Oregano...
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A couple of weeks ago, Zak H. of Bommyknocker Press posted this really cool guide to using die drops to generate diverse Minecraft-esque biomes. Being as a GIS nerd, I kept...
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(Alternate title: "What is this, rules for fantastic medieval wargames campaigns playable with paper and pencils and miniature figures for ants?") The Littlest Brown Book is a...
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This is one of my few pieces of tried & true GM advice, developed during my one good 5e campaign but very useful for the OSR games I'm running now. I'm sure I'm not the first...Linked by the ring
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Last January, I resolved that a "Great Antarctic Hexcrawl" would be my big project for the year, and I was 75% successful! The last installment was in September, after which my...
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I find the OD&D lair treasure tables on M&T p. 22 challenging to decipher & use, so I reformatted them in a way that makes more sense to me. Percentile chance of appearing...
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Here are some posts from this year that didn't quite cross the 'blog-worthy' threshold on their own. (Check out Dwiz's & Prismatic Wasteland's as well!) RPG-adjacent textsI was...
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Read this year: Mike Davis: Old Gods, New Enigmas -- Fascinating collection of essays about labor history, nationalism, and the climate. In a rare overlap with my speculative...
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D&D Fifth Edition turned 10 this year, and reading Knight at the Opera's excellent breakdown of 5e's good/bad/ugly bits got me reflecting on my own experiences with the game....
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I like the idea of using dungeon stocking procedures but usually find them fiddly & time-consuming. I also find it hard to limit myself to procedural generation when I spend so...Linked by the ring
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Since I first posted about Typst, it has completely replaced LaTeX (and to some extent Markdown!) in my TTRPG projects. I've gradually been upgrading my various LaTeX templates...
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One of the first things players usually notice about OD&D is the way abilities are de-emphasized relative to later editions. STR, INT, & WIS have no mechanical effect other...Linked by the ring
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As part of my recent bout of OD&D-related tinkering, I used GIS to make a pseudo-realistic heightmap & nice-ish map layout based on the Outdoor Survival gameboard.1 Downloads A...
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I recently started co-refereeing half of a (more or less) open-table OD&D campaign, with my domain based around a megadungeon called Castle Mordengard. The first report is...
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The OD&D wilderness random encounter tables look like this: They imply a very wacky setting. I've been re-arranging and re-writing some OD&D material for personal use and...
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There are great resources for public domain ttrpg art out there (Jalopy Design, Yochai Gal's) but so far I haven't seen anyone mention Project Gutenberg as a source of visual...
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I recently returned to playing OD&D after a long hiatus. Since our usual Ref was having writer's block, I offered to co-campaign and threw together a gonzo megadungeon (Castle...
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Typst is a typesetting software package intended to dislodge LaTeX from its academic (particularly STEM) typesetting throne. I've been using LaTeX a lot, but around a month ago...
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For GLOGtober challenge 7 I rolled 'color'. I was recently delighted by a brief section in Borges' story Undr that evoked an uncharacteristically pulpy sword-and-sorcery...
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Inspired by this recent post on Eldritch Fields. I'm a sesquipedalian spell enjoyer; in my opinion D&D magic suffers from excessive demystification, and suffusing it with...