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 »
Back in January, Epidiah Ravachol issued a fun challenge: Play 51 games in 2015. I paid attention to folks’ posts about it throughout the year, but figured I didn’t have a shot at hitting 51 — it was a busy year. To my embarrassment, I also spent nearly the entire year thinking the challenge was
I commissioned some artwork for Bleakstone from one of my favorite old-school artists, Steve Zieser. Steve brought Bleakstone’s dominant intelligent species — humans, skurliths, uzbardim, null slimes, and gharrudaemons — to life, and I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out. (Thanks, Steve!) If you’d like to read more about any of these species,
Bleakstone artwork by Steve Zieser Read More »
After posting The Thief, the fourth game I designed, I started thinking about the third, Storylike. I designed Storylike for my daughter, Lark, for New Game Day 2014, and we played it with my wife, Alysia, and our friend Jaben. I came away thinking it probably needed some work, but a year later I haven’t
I hadn’t planned to enter the 200 Word RPG Challenge, but then an idea popped into my head, followed closely by another, and one spilled out of me. The Thief is a solitaire RPG that takes a few minutes to play. You need a handful of coins and possibly something to write on. The Thief
Lulu’s Law for tabletop RPGs: “Within 24 of hours of placing a Lulu order, you’ll find out about a gaming book you should have ordered.” Here’s how that usually breaks down for me, step by step: Place Lulu order for gaming book(s). (Use coupon, of course!) Bask in warm glow of a job well done.
One of the fun things about having blogged for a long time is that I sometimes remember writing something years ago and, when I do, I can just go read it again. And man has this article from my Treasure Tables days back in 2005 come full fucking circle 10 years later: I’d rather rake
