I can trace a lot of my hobbies along crooked paths back to a fuzzy origin, a ball of time and memory that might be as narrow as a year or as wide as a range of years. But it’s rare that I can look at specific interests in the present and say, “That, right […]
The rare clear, bright point of origin Read More »
I mentioned last July that I wasn’t far enough into my group’s Traveller campaign to write a full blog post about it, but here in January after 9 sessions I feel better equipped to talk about how things are going. The crew of the Volitant-class Far Trader Neutrino Phoenix has been exploring the Cidrogal Subsector
How I’m running my zero-prep Traveller sandbox Read More »
One of the joys of having no posting schedule and, let’s be honest, a very small audience, is that I don’t feel any pressure to post. Usually when Yore is quiet I’m up to a bunch of stuff and just don’t have anything to say. How about a quick round-up of the Yore-adjacent stuff? Reading
Quietly reading and playing Read More »
Any attempt to read Appendix N is necessarily going to involve some interpretation. If Gary just listed an author’s name and nothing else, how many of their works should you read? And which ones? How literally do you take “et al”? If Gary listed a book in the middle of the series, do you backtrack
Some thoughts on reading Appendix N Read More »
Since I decided to get back to reading Appendix N back in October 2024, I’ve had a great time tracking down old paperbacks and reading books. The mental shift to this being something I can do as much or as little of as I like, however I like, has been great. I’m currently chipping away
Ticking along on Appendix N Read More »
The other day I came across the phrase “play with gray” on Reddit, a reference to playing miniatures games without, or before, painting the minis. It immediately resonated with me. The state of the miniature union I’ve pretty much stopped painting minis. The last minis I recall finishing were a couple of Blood Angels Infiltrators
I’ve been logging RPG sessions on RPGGeek since 2008, and last night’s Basement Game session — AD&D 1st Edition, running the module “Citadel by the Sea” from Dragon #78, in my Godsbarrow setting — was my 1,000th logged session. We ended on a cliffhanger, with the party having attacked a group of large spiders and
My 1,000th logged RPG session Read More »
Last night during character creation for our RuneQuest campaign, my group employed a tool we use before almost every new game: CATS. Created by P.R. O’Leary, CATS stands for Concept, Aim, Tone, Subject Matter, and it’s a social contract-adjacent pregame discussion to get everyone on the same page, set expectations, and avoid potential issues. It
Turning CATS into CATSOS (“catsauce”) for RPGs Read More »
I took stock of all of my Appendix N reading to date, which entailed a mix of staring off into space, combing my shelves, and blowing the dust off my long-dormant Goodreads account. Of the 29 authors in Appendix N (well, 28 plus an editor), I have: I made it further than I thought back
Cataloging my Appendix N reading Read More »
Back in 2012, as my interest in old-school D&D was returning and flourishing, I started a project to read all of Gary Gygax’s famous Appendix N. I came up with a detailed plan, researched and assembled a 100-book Appendix N reading list that included recommendations for those authors whose works Gary didn’t note by title
Returning to Appendix N (vewy vewy quietly) Read More »
