Editor: Guest author Jason Lutes writes about his lengthy fantasy sandbox game and how he made it happen, West Marches style! I recently wrapped up a 40-session “sandbox” fantasy campaign, taking a cue from the “West Marches” approach popularized by Ben Robbins (of Microscope fame). According to a series of blog posts Ben wrote to… Continue reading Western Wilds: an Expedition into the West Marches →

In fiction, time travel typically falls into the following categories: Time travel can affect the past in details, but not in broad outcome...

The following was written with Cairn in mind, but would work just as well for Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland and heck, D&D 5e if you’re doing a complete revamp. Performing actions inv…

In order for a sandbox region to have a sense of verisimilitude it's important for it for many of the  locations to be actually connected instead of a series of unrelated vignettes. This interconnection creates a web of hooks that pulls players from location to location and unites the patchwork quilt of locations into a unified whole.

Communal world creation done on-the-fly at the table.

I have bigger, better articles in the works but I noticed my output has slowed down, so back into the vaults I go. I've dug up this list fro...

One of my fave GLoG blogs - Whose Measure God Could Not Take - did a fun meme about listing cheap tricks that GMs can use to make their game...

Shipwright Thinking about CosmicOrrery’s post about diceless violence and the reference to this post about combat maneuvers. Skorne’s no to-hit rolls or even damage rolls is something I…

I don’t know how much I’ve ever spent on TTRPG materials in total. I’d probably put it under $200 [1], with the most expensive (yet worthw...

A dynamic encounter for sure It is entirely possible by playing D&D for any amount of time you have encountered or have written some variati...

Since I'm getting a dungeon into publishable form right now for a new project, I thought it might be useful to share a little bit about my p...

This is me thinking out loud about intrigue in role-playing games, and a bit of scaffolding to make it happen. For the moment I'm thinking a...

This  Bastionland Editorial  was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site a week after its...

The first part in a comprehensive guide for designing and running your own hexcrawl campaign.