rootring
rooted in blogs, linked in a ringYore
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On the ring since 2026-03-19
Latest activity 3mo ago
420 posts
Earlier
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I had no idea SJG had done a licensed sourcebook for Andre Norton‘s excellent Witch World series. It feels awesome to crack open a book from 1989 — my salad years as a gamer —...
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I like using X-in-6 rolls to resolve things on fly when I’m GMing, particularly stuff for which there is no rule and for yes/no questions. I also love using oracle dice — in my...
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I can trace a lot of my hobbies along crooked paths back to a fuzzy origin, a ball of time and memory that might be as narrow as a year or as wide as a range of years. But it’s...
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I mentioned last July that I wasn’t far enough into my group’s Traveller campaign to write a full blog post about it, but here in January after 9 sessions I feel better...
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One of the joys of having no posting schedule and, let’s be honest, a very small audience, is that I don’t feel any pressure to post. Usually when Yore is quiet I’m up to a...
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Any attempt to read Appendix N is necessarily going to involve some interpretation. If Gary just listed an author’s name and nothing else, how many of their works should you...
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Since I decided to get back to reading Appendix N back in October 2024, I’ve had a great time tracking down old paperbacks and reading books. The mental shift to this being...
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The other day I came across the phrase “play with gray” on Reddit, a reference to playing miniatures games without, or before, painting the minis. It immediately resonated with...
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I’ve been logging RPG sessions on RPGGeek since 2008, and last night’s Basement Game session — AD&D 1st Edition, running the module “Citadel by the Sea” from Dragon #78, in my...
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Last night during character creation for our RuneQuest campaign, my group employed a tool we use before almost every new game: CATS. Created by P.R. O’Leary, CATS stands for...
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I took stock of all of my Appendix N reading to date, which entailed a mix of staring off into space, combing my shelves, and blowing the dust off my long-dormant Goodreads...
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Back in 2012, as my interest in old-school D&D was returning and flourishing, I started a project to read all of Gary Gygax’s famous Appendix N. I came up with a detailed plan,...
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Back in August my Seattle group started a new campaign we’ve dubbed the Basement Game, and its kickoff AD&D 1st Edition adventure is set in Godsbarrow — making it the third...
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Back in January I posted about my 2024 RPG collecting goal: acquiring the complete game lines for Ars Magica, Delta Green, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, and Dune:...
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I was thinking about why I don’t post more on RPGnet (I concluded that while I like it there, I’ve never felt like I fit in; that’s not unusual for me), and looking back...Linked by the ring
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I started up a Delta Green [affiliate link] campaign last September, and it’s been a blast. It’s become one of my favorite RPGs, and with a few sessions under my belt that...
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Seventeen years ago, I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo 2007. I was proud to have written it but I didn’t think it was any good. Until tonight, I’d never read it. With the benefit...
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I’ve been logging RPG sessions on RPGGeek since 2008 — 961 of them as of this writing. I was thinking about Ars Magica [affiliate link] this morning and wondered where it stood...
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I’ve collected stuff my whole life, including RPGs — but although I bought my first gaming product, Avalon Hill’s Lords of Creation box set, at age ten, I didn’t have my first...
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I’ve decided on a TTRPG collecting goal for 2024: I’m going to try to acquire the entire Ars Magica 5th Edition line in print. If you happen to have any Ars Magica 5e books...
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My beloved Kaweco Sport mechanical pencil, which I’ve used in every in-person game session since 2015, finally gave out. Its plastic internals stopped working; all the brass...
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I didn’t paint much in 2023. I took stock in the new year and realized that after three years of painting minis for 40k, Kill Team, and BattleTech, I’d played just ten games...
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MartinRalya.com has been online since 2009, and has included a blog since 2012. Over the years, the focus has shifted back and forth between blog posts and static pages. When I...
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I wrote my last #dungeon23 room today! I have no idea what I’ll do with the Black Furnace next, if anything, but I’m proud to have finished it. This is only my second or third...
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I haven’t written about the end of the world in Godsbarrow, but the entire setting — everything I’ve ever created for it that doesn’t live here, on Yore — nearly vanished...
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Driving home from running a DCC RPG session, I was noodling about why I love dungeon crawls so much. My usual line of thinking is that I love dungeons because they’re basically...
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I’m coming up on a movie milestone: Given that A) it’s spooky season, B) my default cinematic comfort food is MST3K, and C) I’m working on some anime-watching challenges, my...
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YouTuber DM Tales did a lovely highlight feature on my first Godsbarrow book, The Unlucky Isles [affiliate link], on his channel in Skipping Lunch Episode 8. The segment starts...
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After trying to play my first 10th Edition 40k game out of my phone, which was handy about 1/3 of the time and a pain in the ass the other 2/3 of the time, I put some time into...
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Here’s a little old/new paint job comparison. It’s not night and day, but I can see the benefit of experience! From left to right, the Infiltrators are July 2023, May 2020,...