art: Mark Tedin One of the most frustrating questions for me to read is, "Is X-OSR system compatible with Y-OSR adventures?" or "Can I use B...

DES I GNING   FOR  DUNGEON 23 With my decision to work on Dungeon23 coincides my starting a public Crystal Frontier Campaign and being diss...

In this blog series, I will dissect the spatial elements of wilderness environments and explore how tabletop-friendly prep and mechanics could be

My opinions on elfgames are empirically correct.

Lesson #1: The cover is flipping you off. Hello there. There has been a lot of new blood injected into the OSR/NSR space recently. I'll leave the ho...

A way to break down searching into three choices with informed outcomes for each.

Even games have a voice. When you sit down and read a tabletop RPG, the game itself speaks to you. The choice you make around narration…

A dungeon room a day for all of 2023.

This post is based on a conversation I had with Ben L. in response to his recent post over on:  http://maziriansgarden.blogspot.com/2023/07/...

This is going to be one of those posts where someone says how Game Mastering in RPG’s is basically a lot like part of their work experience in another field. I'll also get into the dangerous arena of providing GM advice. I’d like to tell you I’ll avoid cheesy reaches to fit the framework but make absolutely no guarantees.

Using the reaction roll as (almost) a universal resolution mechanic: sketch for animist skill system

Been playing that Zelda game everyone’s on about, and rereading Dungeon Meshi ( trailer just came out for the tv version!) and thinking abo...

Mystery scenarios are probably the second-most popular genre of gameplay in RPGs after dungeoncrawling. Despite this, quite frustratingly, m...

What if initiative was the only roll in a combat system? Less a question of "can I murder this horrible horse?" and more "can I murder it be...

The Shattered Coasts server sees a fair share of games. Some are via voice, some are slow-form play-by-post, and then there are the dreaded ...

One of the most unforgiveable things that mainstream D&D has ever done was to make Diplomacy a skill. Weapon skills and knowledge skills, su...

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...