Yore has been quiet, but I’ve been busy for the past couple of months — hobby-wise, painting Warhammer 40k terrain (which I haven’t gotten around to photographing yet) and starting up the first Godsbarrow campaign. After over a year of lonely fun creating this setting using Worlds Without Number [paid link], it’s absolutely delightful to […]
The first Godsbarrow campaign Read More »
Lesserton and Mor (paid link), written by Joel and Jeff Sparks of Faster Monkey Games, is a product that I don’t think has received its due. It’s a fantastic, unique, flavorful, and versatile sourcebook for a premade city and its neighboring open-air megadungeon, and it’s incredibly cool. (Update: And it’s now free in PDF!) For starters,
An overlooked OSR gem: Lesserton and Mor Read More »
John Aegard has produced some really cool stuff, including two resources that jumped out at me: Jedi Blackbird, a Star Wars hack of Lady Blackbird, and a collection of tips for running a Dungeon World one-shot. Jedi Blackbird Jedi Blackbird is more structured than its inspiration, but only a little. That’s a good thing: Lady
Mapping with index cards, and Jedi Blackbird Read More »
Over on Monsters and Manuals, David McGrogan (author of the excellent Yoon-Suin, one of the starred recommendations on my big list of RPG stuff on Lulu) wrote a neat post about a rule of thumb for sandbox games: Two Problems for Every Solution. David shares an example from his campaign that explains it well: For
One choice, two consequences Read More »
I was poking through Dave Arneson‘s The First Fantasy Campaign[1] the other day and happened across a section I’d never looked at before: Gypsy Sayings & Chance Cards. The sayings don’t mesh well with my GMing style (they remind me of Ravenloft’s Tarrokka Deck (paid link), a 2e product revived for 5e), but the Chance Cards
Chance Cards in Blackmoor Read More »
I use the wilderness encounter system from the B/X D&D Expert Set (paid link) in my DCC RPG (paid link) hexcrawl (the binder for which is full of hexcrawling tools), but it occurred to me that it would be pretty easy to tweak that system to take advantage of DCC’s dice chain. In this tweaked
Wilderness encounter chance by terrain type for DCC RPG Read More »
I wanted to use the wilderness travel rules from the B/X D&D Expert Set (paid link) in my DCC RPG (paid link) hexcrawl, but character’s movement speeds don’t translate 1:1 across the two games. I compared species (races) in both editions, crunched the numbers, and turned the results into a one-page PDF reference for DCC
DCC RPG wilderness travel speeds Read More »
I needed wilderness encounter tables for the DCC RPG (paid link) hexcrawl I’m running, but there aren’t any in the book. Jeff Rients created some excellent tables for wandering monsters by dungeon level (which also appear in Crawl! #5), but after searching high and low I couldn’t find any wilderness encounter tables online. So I
DCC RPG wilderness encounter tables Read More »
While reading Chris Kutalik’s excellent blog, Hill Cantons, I found myself thinking, “Why the hell don’t I own any of his books?” So I ordered three of them in print: Slumbering Ursine Dunes (paid link), Fever-Dreaming Marlinko (paid link), and the Hill Cantons Compendium (paid link). (While I was waiting for them to arrive, I also blogged about
Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Fever-Dreaming Marlinko 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 »
