Bloggies 2024

For our purposes let’s just say that lore is “setting background”: information about the setting of a campaign. The paradigm is perhaps the ...

Gary Gygax is probably the best known name in Role Playing Games -- still, nearly 15 years after his death.  Considered Dungeons & Dragons’ ...

30 Dec 2024—This is an updated version of my October blog post. The original conatins several factual and mathematical errors, but is archived here

A look at how to enhance the narrative impact of character deaths in Dungeons and Dragons, though house rules and alternate TTRPG systems.

A not so short tour of your rpg's layout, its different parts, and how to use them.

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

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.

Writing adventure modules exercises two disparate skills: writing and design. When I studied design, the central thesis of our work was as follows: “Desi...

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

What Akira Toriyama can teach you about creativity and worldbuilding.

A method for players to surprise and delight with small pieces of worldbuilding during a game.

An OSR tabletop gaming blog.

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

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...

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 …

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…

Discover how to use Faction Turns to enrich your RPG world, creating a more dynamic, engaging, and unpredictable game experience for players.

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 main ways of representing dungeons: traditional dungeons (mapped floorplans), pointcrawl dungeons (flowchart-style mapping), flux dungeons (random and emergent discovery), and stygian delves (…

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…

Tabletop RPG rulebooks only serve to restrict and constrain us. So why is that a good thing?

The OSR space has discussed the importance of framing interesting combats. It has not done the same amount of work to provide concrete advic...

A question: you ever try to run a campaign with a city in it? Not just a town or settlement or fort, but a proper city, one with an actual street

🏆BLOGGIES 2024 - THEORY - WINNERS🏆 🥇 Gold: The 1 HP Dragon @explorersdesign.bsky.social 🥈 Silver: In Praise of Legwork @samsorensen.bsky.social 🥉 Copper: Interesting Social Situations, or The Discourse Post @riseupcomus.bsky.social Voting for #BLOGGIES24 will continue this Friday!

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Instead of a ± to Reaction rolls or whatever, track individual events the characters take. To do this, we first make a Reputation Table. At its most

A set of mysteries that “map out” a given part of the world. PCs can investigate these freely and in any order.

The system of downtime actions I created is individual by design, built as a counterbalance to OSR games where the action is focused relent...