Sufficiently advanced technology blah blah blah. But I do think it's helpful thinking of wizards as people with access to out-of-place technology as a way to conceptualize what...

Herein I read the monster manual entries from OD&D in order and try to parse them into groupings and categories that let me use them at the table.Every attempt to read OD&D is...

Spells are never spoken aloud. That's just superstition. Spells are always written on scrolls. The spell is the scroll. The wizard writes "chain." The scroll functions as...

A while back, when juggling all the materials I needed to run a game, I had the idea for and mocked up a proof of concept of a hexcrawl dashboard--something that had everything...

I've long been a big fan of kung fu movies, but only recently started dabbling in the core texts by reading a translation of The Legend of the Condor Heroes. This has prompted...

"I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope...

When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what goblins get. You can also use this table for folks like half-orcs or maybe even tieflings,...

There's nothing revolutionary in this post, but I think it contains generally good advice and feels worthwhile articulating.When an RPG gives you something generic, a player...

Another year and the Bloggies have come and gone! I'm very pleased to have taken home some medals in the Best Series category!Gold: The Designing Dungeons Course, or, How to...

When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what hobbits get.You can either roll a d10 for your culture to get a result from a...

Sometimes when you're writing a dungeon room, it can feel like pulling teeth. The empty space and the stocking result of "Trap with Treasure" mocks you.Here's a technique to...

When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what elf-friends get.What are elf-friends? Well:The master of the house was an elf-friend—one...

When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what elves get.This is ostensibly for the Middle-earth Hexcrawl project but I think it can be...

It's February. I posted my finished Shire Hexcrawl back in December and stopped making regular updates about the Middle-earth project. But I haven't been idle, dear reader. I...

When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what humans get.You can either roll a d9 for your culture to get a result from a tightly-bound...

If you're running a game like Dolmenwood, a fun, realistic detail is that shops have variable stocks based on the rarity of the trade good. For example, if you go to...

It is 3 AM and I cannot sleep because I woke up with these random mechanics coming into my head. But one of the reasons you keep a blog is to have a place to dump such...

Schwew. OK. This turned into a long one. Break!! has the best crafting rules for an OSR game that I've ever seen. Originally, I was trying to borrow them for my little house...

I worked on this over Christmas. It's a little late but perhaps you (like me) haven't quite cleaned up your tree yet. I have limited exposure to war games. I have played WH40K...

A magic item inspired by Phlox's version, here. Approaching from my premise that +1s are boring magic items, how can I adapt the classic periapt of wisdom?The periapt of wisdom...

0501Southwest: Valley of Eternal CheerSouth: SnomesSoutheast: Jinglebell BarrensRANKIN/BASS PRO SHOP: A pyramid of silver and gold. The single obvious entrance at its base is...

0203North: Conifer MountainNortheast: Three CalvesSoutheast: The GrumpusSouth: Gingerbread Village HOUSE OF THE KRINGLES. A snowy landscape in the domain of the Winter Warlock....

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I'm currently doing a preorder campaign instead of a "traditional" crowdfunding campaign for my first big project for His Majesty the...

Back in September of this year, I began a daily writing prompt inspired by this year's reread of The Lord of the Rings and Idraluna Archive's excellent hexmap of Middle-earth....

An installment of my hexmap for Middle-earth project. Follow the "Middle-earth Hexmap" tag for all entries in this series. From the beginning of the project, I knew it wasn't...

When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what dwarves get.You can either roll a d7 for your house to get a result from a tightly-bound...

In case you missed it, I'm currently running a direct pre-order campaign for my upcoming 100+ room, 5 level dungeon The Castle Automatic. Become an Early Worm now!But what's...

On the matter of writing empty hexesI've already talked about my approach to writing Tolkien content, here. I've learned that I need to create actionable, discrete details--not...

An installment of my hexmap for Middle-earth project. Follow the "Middle-earth Hexmap" tag for all entries in this series.In the east of the Shire, north of the Water, are...

In case you missed it, I just launched a pre-order campaign for my upcoming 100+ room, 5 level dungeon The Castle Automatic. Click to become an Early Worm!Instead of doing a...