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Recent posts from across the ring.
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Marcia and I have been talking about feats for her delightful 5e sorta-pseudo-clone, Cinco. I find Cinco really charming and have been toying with it as a set for Gran...
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Eris sprawls across an archipelago of islands stretching northward from the feet of Mount Hexvouna, its stone towers and ornate bridges rising from the waters like the bones of...
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This blog post is part of a series! Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four"Don't prep plots" is a fairly common saying in RPG circles. I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure...
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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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On open-ended and close-ended solo rpgs and what group play can learn from them
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A short one this week. Last time, the wizard freaks met an elderly wizard, wrecked his car, and made friends with Philadelphia's local cult of Apollo. This week, the cult sends...
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Corpse Troops1HD (5HP), AC14 (Iron Plates), Morale 13 (Fearless) Mass-raised by possessing them with randomly selected wardead souls, weapons tied to their insensate hands with...
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Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers, Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin… Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to...
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I really like Eldritch Fields’ table for encounter activities, but I wanted to simplify it so that I don’t need an entirely different set of indices for sentient vs...
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I'm currently in the process of trying to puzzle out how exactly "territory development" (what we would now probably call the "domain game") works in AD&D, as described on page...
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For context: this post is inspired by a question posed in an excellent podcast episode recorded by Thomas Manuel for Rascal News, in which he reads and responds to the Warden's...
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Dock is the second spoke on the Wheel that makes up crew life, between the drudgery of Transit and the enterprise of Layover.I'm aiming for a good clear procedure to work...
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tl;dr: espionage and information warfare in domain games needs to be handled with care to avoid slowing the game and diminishing player agency. A point raised in Infernal Pacts...
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This was going to be an entry into the great and storied Dungeon Duel I have going on with Loch. I realised half way through writing it that I didn't like it, mostly because I...
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Prophecy is tricky in ttrpgs because we (the players) have free will and exist in linear time. A future event which cannot be avoided (in the Oedipal style) goes against the...
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Running an Open Table of Cloud Empress has taught me a lot. It's my third time running a hexcrawl, my first time running an open table, and my first campaign with, what I hope,...
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Jesus Christ. Am I some sort of influencer or thought leader that others both really follow my words and hold me responsible to their idea of them? I got a comment a few days...
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The Time Tuner is a magical location that could appear in a magical dungeon, a wizard's tower, or a strange lab. It could prove to be a puzzling trap for curious adventurers,...
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Look what the cat dragged in. Monthly project updates, plus curated blog posts and oddments worth your time.
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The Ultimate Warrior! Over at Save vs. Total Party Kill, Ram discusses a quick rule for determining death or unconsciousness at 0 hp or below by making a save versus Death. On...
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This is both the least useful and most potentially divisive of my Navigator mechanic posts (intro, domain economy, island generator, troupe play, full document) - I am fully...
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36 sketches of vampires for use in any vampire game
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36 sketches of vampires for use in any vampire game
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This post was originally written as a Bluesky thread, hence the staccato, 300-character-paragraph format. In celebration of the imminent Blades ‘68 campaign, I thought I’d talk...
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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...
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The Sims is a series of games that despite its obvious "genre" (that of simulation) actually has a lot going on that defies neat categorization. While players have the...
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Meta image for this post courtesy of DUNGEON WEED at bandcamp Over on the His Majesty the Worm Discord, one of the perennial pairs of questions is: How the hell do I restock...
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Welcome back to Rose Playing Games, the Rose-only (count: 2) tabletop RPG show! This episode we’re talking about the history of mechanics like Call of Cthulhu sanity and other...
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Alright, my babies. We’ve heard from the ‘orthodox’ Marxists from the DSA. We’ve heard from the crypto Marxist-Leninist party. Now let’s hear from the Maoist-tendency...