rootring
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On the ring since 2026-03-18
Latest activity 22mo ago
60 posts
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Forgive me, but I must post theory. I want to talk about worldbuilding, cognitive load, and the narrative baseline. Let’s first work to define what the narrative baseline is,...Linked by the ring
- Actionable Worldbuilding AMONG CATS AND BOOKS
- Cultures, not Games AMONG CATS AND BOOKS
- A Sicko’s Guide to Prepping D&D Valeria Loves
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- A Sicko’s Guide to Prepping D&D Valeria Loves
- The Map Speaks: Communicating Via Maps Personable Thoughts
- Seize, Ground, Listen afcbrodie
- Bloggies Breakdown: Round 1 Explorers Design
- The Bloggies' 2026 Nominees Explorers Design
- Play Style Preferences: Widdershins Worldbuilding Widdershins Wanderings
- I’d Rather Be a Mouse Than an Elf Prismatic Wasteland
- Justifying Failed Careers in Electric Bastionland Wandering Diejack
- Treasure Thoughts Microblog Rise Up Comus
- Example: Making Literary Scenes for Multiple Cultures Advantage on Arcana
- EYE OF NEWT AND A DASH OF STARDUST: Ingredients for Fairy Tale Adventures I CAST LIGHT!
- Shiny TTRPG links #206 Seed of Worlds
- The Demon of Dogwater Gulch Pre-Postmortem Gordian Blade
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Deep in the darkest parts of the Prismatic Wasteland discord server a bunch of us bloggers and designers decided to do a little Secret Santa. Instead of socks and cheap...
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There’s a special place in the depths of my heart for those freaky little merchants you find in odd places. The concept of “dungeon merchants” has been around forever,...
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There exists, within the world, a single somata engraving kit. It is not something one stumbles upon by luck or chance, and it cannot be found through research, coin, or word...
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Hypothetical time: you’re starting a new game and want to have all the player characters connected in a way that creates just the right amount of drama, tension, and connective...
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When I’m running a game, one of the highlights for me is inviting players to collaboratively build the world with me. In the past, this has resulted in a few hiccups. Enter...
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I’m reading Berserk. There’s a part—almost 200 chapters in—where Guts is teaching Isidro how to fight. Here’s the panels: The core of these panels seem to be drawing on Kentaro...Linked by the ring
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Prismatic Wasteland has issued a challenge and who am I to resist such a thing? My challenge is thus: In January 2024, come up with a new resolution mechanic for a TTRPG and...
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Alright, another year in the books means that we’re going to go through files, notes, and memories and try to recap this thing. This is a mostly self-indulgent post, rough...Linked by the ring
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The children run through the village, laughing and singing in harmony. The organist in the temple plays music that would rival even the great masters of the world. The dour...
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Welcome, traveler, to Gulch. This town ain’t much, but it’s ours, and we’d appreciate it if you’d not muck about in our business, thank you very much. You might be tempted to...
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What can Over the Garden Wall teach us about adventure design? The 10 episodes are tight, full of surprises, and effortlessly entertaining. For the most part, they seem to...
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Imagine a character that has been through it all: hard fought victories against deadly foes, slaying monsters of legend, delving into depths unknown, and wielding the old...
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Usually, the way I handle players exploring a location is pretty standard: I describe the location, point out the interesting bits, and let the players inform me how their...
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In the following post I’m going to lay out a foundational structure for using scrabble tiles in two different, but connected, ways. The first is using the tiles as a key to...Linked by the ring
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Anyone who knows me knows how much I love spreadsheets, and that’s why—like an absolute freak—I write the first draft of my adventures in a spreadsheet. Hold on. Don’t leave....
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In the latest POSR game I’ve been running we’ve played eleven sessions and the players have only explored two dungeons—and those dungeons only took five sessions between both...
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I think something that almost every GM seems to go through is the elusive “ship game” , where the characters are all members of a crew of some kind of ship (sailing or space)...
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As I gear up to run another game for my friends, I’ve been fiddling with my own system. I’m trying to mesh together multiple things that I love—characters with cool abilities,...
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Like almost everyone, I’ve spent some time thinking about Witcher style monster hunting in RPGs, racking my brain over and over again as I try to “solve the case” as it were....Linked by the ring
- Making a Cool Monster Prismatic Wasteland
- Monsters: Nested Hit Dice and Puzzle Ass Monsters Two Smoking Boots
- Combat as Art - Boss Design and Reflections on Violence Fail Forward
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- Behemotian Boss Battle Press the Beast
- All Along the Clocktower Prismatic Wasteland
- Seven-Part Pact: Combat A Knight at the Opera
- Ten Years (Part 1) A Knight at the Opera
- H Monsters at the Opera A Knight at the Opera
- The 1 HP Dragon Explorers Design
- Ramble - Hit Locations Fail Forward
- Clashing, Continued A Knight at the Opera
- Systemcrawl: Break!! RPG Widdershins Wanderings
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This should be a quicker post than Part 1 and Part 2B , thankfully. I think we’re hitting the stride now and can pick up some speed—I’ve discussed why I’m making these...
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Apologies for the bit of the delay in getting part two out the door. I’ve been swamped lately with editing Barkeep on the Borderlands and the blog is the first thing to suffer....
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If you’re anything like me, you’re a thirty-something year old living in Canada that like fries (my fav food), bouldering (indoors only), reading overhyped fantasy novels...Linked by the ring
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This post is my own musings and an extension on WD’s excellent post on monster design . Seriously, it’s good stuff. Go read it. It occurred to me that you could extrapolate the...Linked by the ring
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The title of this post is nothing more than a fancy way of me saying that I’m going to talk about the last three months. I had originally planned to do monthly check-ins, but I...
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When my friends are having fun, I’m having fun. When I’m running an RPG, one of the main questions sitting at the forefront of my mind is are they having fun? Most of the...
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A roundup of the things I was checking out this week. Magnetic Rose is a Mothership Module Magnetic Rose One of the things that I’ve said a bunch of times in my life is “what...
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A roundup of the things I was checking out this week. Psych and Rules Writing This twitter thread, by Sen-Foong Lim This short but instructive twitter thread goes into how to...
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A roundup of the things I was checking out this week. Ship Game My (Untested) Theory of Nautical Campaigns by Dwiz Ah, the untenable ship game. I feel like we’ve all tried it....
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A roundup of the things I was checking out this week. Ship Game My (Untested) Theory of Nautical Campaigns by Dwiz Ah, the untenable ship game. I feel like we’ve all tried it....