Crawl! (also available on DriveThruRPG; paid link) is a DCC RPG fanzine designed and published by Dak Ultimak, with a rotating cast of writers (which often includes Dak). I recently snagged the full run, and this zine is really, really well conceived and executed. It’s rawlished — both raw and polished at the same time, […]
Zine roundup: Crawl!, issues 1-11 Read More »
I’ve discovered that if I’m careful I can de-ink — de-crayon, really — old precision-edge dice, then ink them anew with a Sharpie. My first real test of this was tonight, using the dice from my Cook Expert set. They’d been nicely crayoned years ago (by someone else), but crayon isn’t really my jam.[1] Here
Removing crayon from old-school precision-edge dice Read More »
Chris Kutalik has been running his marvelous-sounding Hill Cantons campaign for seven years, and blogging — with clarity and vigor — about his experiences along the way. I love reading about sandbox and hexcrawl games, and Chris knows his stuff. (He’s also published several books, three of which — Slumbering Ursine Dunes [paid link], Fever-Dreaming Marlinko [paid
Hill Cantons and Building Dynamic Sandboxes Read More »
Thanks to a great question from Rogue Prismatic Golem on G+, I’ve updated Hexmancer to version 1.1. This version includes clearer language for the d24 roll, the d20 roll, and the Byways and Waterways section, plus a new logo. (The logo font is Hexatus, by Koczman Bálint.) I also thought it would be a good
Hexmancer update and extended example Read More »
I needed a simple system for procedurally generating hexcrawl terrain and features, so I made one: Hexmancer. It’s two pages long, including design notes and acknowledgements, and you get to roll funky dice. What it does Hexmancer hexcrawls with your hexes, baby! Hexmancer is designed to procedurally generate a fantasy borderlands/wilderness region in “fantasy Western
Hexmancer: Procedural Hex Generation System Read More »
Richard LeBlanc, who produces wonderful, polished old-school resources, just published a free one-page tracker for exploration resources, and it’s glorious. (Here’s the direct download link.) It’s set up to help you keep track of torches, time spent in the dungeon, etc. in one-turn increments, and it includes notes for 0e, B/X, and 1e. This one’s
Free one-sheet time tracker for old-school fantasy RPGs Read More »
Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad (also available on DriveThruRPG; paid link) is a joint production by Wayne Snyder, Edgar Johnson, and Adam Muszkiewicz. Metal Gods is the “DCC is like the best heavy metal album covers” of zines. It’s rarr and gonzo and awesome and rawlished, and I love it. I wish there were more than
Zine roundup: Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad, issues 1-3 Read More »
Via a private share on G+, I followed a link to OD&D Setting, a free PDF by Wayne Rossi of the excellent Semper Initiativus Unum blog. It’s excellent. In 11 pages of logical observations, it pulls apart the components of OD&D‘s (paid link) implied setting — the encounter tables, the Wilderness Survival map, etc. —
OD&D’s implied setting Read More »
I was noodling about zines and the “raw but polished” quality that attracts me to the ones I like best (most recently the DCC RPG zines Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad and Crawl!), and it occurred to me that the portmanteau “rawlished” might actually be useful. It describes a lot of my favorite old school fantasy
I was struggling to articulate my play style preferences last night, during a session debrief, and I kept thinking, “Didn’t I write about this on G+ like a year ago? I wish I could find that — and all those great posts that helped me figure out what I wanted in gaming, too!” What I
Alchemy, agency, and surprises Read More »
