Grid System 101: A Beginner's Glossary
A not so short tour of your rpg's layout, its different parts, and how to use them.
Advice (Jan 20-23)
Put Your RPG Campaign on a Deadline (It’ll Be Okay.) - Silverarm
Games don’t last forever. I really want them to but a perpetual game is an impossible goal by definition. So many cool things can emerge
A Nest of Vipers: Navigating TTRPG Contracts and Partnerships
In this blog post, I hope to share everything I learned from my misfortunes and triumphs in forming and breaking TTRPG industry partnerships—equipping you (the intrepid indie designer or curious hobbyist) with a foundation of protective business acumen.
On People-Centered Adventure Design
Writing adventure modules exercises two disparate skills: writing and design. When I studied design, the central thesis of our work was as follows: “Desi...
Ten Tangible Tips For Editing Your RPG Manuscript - Sam Sorensen
Remove instances of “to be” verbs: be, am, is, are, was, were, being, and been. Instead of “The goblin is dancing,” write “The goblin dances.” In
Toybox Creativity: The Genius of Dragon Ball — Prismatic Wasteland
What Akira Toriyama can teach you about creativity and worldbuilding.
Collaborative Worldbuilding: Glimpses
A method for players to surprise and delight with small pieces of worldbuilding during a game.
The Gift Economy In Play
An OSR tabletop gaming blog.
Writing Wages - Luke Gearing
In January, I quit my job to work at Tuesday Knight Games full-time. Wages of Sin (crowdfunding soon!) is my first book written whilst doing games
YE COMPLEAT MANUAL OF UNMANNERLY FIGHTING
In OSR games I have seen many players and refs alike bemoan the weakness of low level characters. This is what some call a “skill issue.” This guide shall se...
Form and Structure: The DNA of Adventure Modules
This article was posted to Patreon two weeks early. Thank you to everyone who supports this sort of work financially. The aim of the Towards Formal Adventures project (which I haven’t worked …
Setting up an OSR Sandbox
This is directed to newbies who are interested in GMing an OSR game. I won’t assume previous experience with TTRPGs at large, although I can imagine that they’re GMs who come from play cultures and…
How to Set Up and Use Faction Turns
Discover how to use Faction Turns to enrich your RPG world, creating a more dynamic, engaging, and unpredictable game experience for players.
Monster Checklist
Okay, so you’re writing up a monster entry. Run through this checklist to make sure that you haven’t missed anything. #1. The concept shoul...
Four Types of Dungeon Design & How To Combine Them
Four main ways of representing dungeons: traditional dungeons (mapped floorplans), pointcrawl dungeons (flowchart-style mapping), flux dungeons (random and emergent discovery), and stygian delves (…
Eight Intangible Tips for Editing Your TTRPG Manuscript
So much editing “advice” given in TTRPGs is basic copyediting advice. An example is Sams’ recent post, but it’s just one example among many. Why? RPGs aren’t journalism, so the AP Style…