rootring
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On the ring since 2026-03-19
Latest activity 8mo ago
82 posts
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It's been about two months since the last time I played RAM with my friends from the Prismatic Waystation, but tonight we got to spend some more time in Skerples' Magical...
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After last week's playtest of our 18th Century Survey game, one of my players sent me a writeup of ideas on how to lean harder into the poker aspect of the Stewardship...
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Had a chance to host a couple of friends to try out the survey game! I wanted to compose some reflections while the experience is fresh in my mind. I've previously posted about...
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This is part 2 in a design journal around my 18th century land survey project. For part 1, check here. Last time I mentioned that I wanted the macro loop of this game to...
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I have been deep in the development mines this month. I've made good progress on a roughly testable version of the Mad Biographers, but I've been recently seized by one of my...Linked by the ring
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Last month I wrote about narrative in TTRPGs as a historiographical process. In that, I argued that what we usually call the "story" of our games, especially adventure games,...
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I'm seeing some other blogs start to compose their 2025 retrospectives and thought I'd join in the fun. This has been a pretty dang busy year, so I'll lead with my year in...
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How resilient is your prep when your players zig instead of zag? For the most part these days I mainly aim to run blorb-style prep that is, by nature, pretty ruggedized against...Linked by the ring
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Rowan's excellent post from this past week on the OSR Onion has reignited some useful commentary on Objectivity in Game Design and the historical term-as-ammunition of the...Linked by the ring
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Unfortunately tonight I did not get a chance to break out my magical squid Dungeon Lord in my weekly His Majesty the Worm game. On the plus side, that meant I had a captive...
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11/22/2025 Updated Blogwagon participants: Random Ape Encounter's assessment of GURPS Fluorite Guillotine's assessment of Cortex Prime lootlootlore's assessment of Savage...
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In a hypomanic continuation of my Honeybee game thought experiment, I'd like to synthesize two texts: one foundational and one that hit me like a bolt from the blue this week....Linked by the ring
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Well, both Hellbenders and Random Access Memory are in playtest states and I'm still feeling a nervous creative energy, so I spent the last couple of days ruminating on a few...Linked by the ring
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I haven't even put out my decorative turkey deep frier and yet here I am, starting to celebrate Hexmas with Prismatic Wasteland. Details on the Hexmas Bandwagon here Edit:...
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Update 11/7/25 - This idea has really been stuck in my head, so if you're interested, I have a cleaner writeup posted here! This afternoon I was working on some Christmas gifts...Linked by the ring
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In one of my earliest posts I drafted an idea for an overloaded encounter table that used blackjack mechanics. It has been a standout part of setting the stakes for scenes in...
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This discussion is going to center a couple of concepts that are useful to understand when talking shop about TRPGs. Diegesis. This is the cornerstone of what I want to...
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I didn't blog about our second playtest session last month because it mainly consisted of bringing a fourth player into the group and rolling up his character, but tonight's...
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This is a sequel post to First Draft of Progression Rules, a post from a few weeks ago. I introduced my playtest group to the concept of Promises, Testimonies, and Cautionary...
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Like most games, one of the first questions asked about running His Majesty the Worm is, "what's the right party size for this game?" Answers tend to be pretty consistent. 2 is...
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I've had the task of capital W Worldbuilding on my backburner since the beginning of this project. I'm a fan of anti-canon; I really struggle with the idea of running a game in...Linked by the ring
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This is gonna be a dry one, but I wanted to highlight some feedback and help I've gotten from Zak, Binary Star Games, and Ken in my process of redesigning the Hellbenders...
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I've been sort of stymied by how to represent character development in Hellbenders so far. We know that so far in our game, characters have: A "Past Life" with a Legacy A...
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The good news is that running RPGs for buddies is basically always fun. I've got a group of friends through work who get together every other week or so to play some tabletop....Linked by the ring
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Marcia at Traverse Fantasy declared a Blog Bandwagon on the topic of Appendix N. This was then formalized by our dear ostrich friend Warren at Prismatic Wasteland as...
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If you have played a tabletop RPG or just about any video game, you are probably familiar with the concept of Hit Points, or HP. HP as a concept comes from tabletop war gaming,...
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I swear this isn't procrastination. I was reading Knock! Volume 5 this past week and came across a wonderful article by Nicolas Dessaux that I would link if I could find...
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I finished up "U0" of the RPG playtest rules this past week! Very excited, I think I can run a baseline or first-level adventure with what is now down on paper. The process of...Linked by the ring
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I'm about seven pages into cleaning up the last three weeks of blog posts into a single cohesive document. I'm finally getting into Character Creation, which thankfully hasn't...
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Let’s Recap. In the last few posts we have worked through some core rules. We have covered the basic theory of the exploration pillar: a dedicated frame of play to describe...