When I opened and sorted the pound of Gamescience dice I ordered from their website (here’s the listing), I didn’t notice that there were some odd dice “masquerading” as ordinary dice. At least for me, it’s hard to tell what’s on a Gamescience die until I’ve inked it — I see a decahedron, I assume […]
The pound of Gamescience dice was odder than I thought Read More »
I ordered a pound of dice from Gamescience the hot minute they came back in stock, and I figured I’d break it down here so folks could see what’s in the current assortment. Das basics At $55, it’s not cheap — but neither are Gamescience dice in general, and you get a lot of dice
What do you get in a pound of Gamescience dice? 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 love dice, I love fiddling with game design, and I love simple tools that make things easier. At the nexus of those three things sits AnyDice. Developed by Jasper Flick, AnyDice calculates the probability of each possible result for just about any die roll. (I say “just about,” but it’s never let me down.)
AnyDice: A handy game design tool Read More »
Crawling Under a Broken Moon (also available on DriveThruRPG; paid link) is a DCC RPG (paid link) zine absolutely packed with gonzo post-apocalyptic goodness. Designed, published, and frequently written and illustrated by Reid San Filippo (with other collaborators, depending on the issue), it wears its love of Thundarr the Barbarian (and other iconic ’80s media)
Zine roundup: Crawling Under a Broken Moon, issues 1-12 Read More »
I love Dyson Logos’ cartography and coil-bound gaming books, so the Dodecahedron 2015 Cartographic Review is right up my apple cart. It more than earns its starred entry on my big list of Lulu RPG recommendations. The Cartographic Review is a big book of maps, running close to 90 pages with a map per page.
Glorious old-school maps: the Dodecahedron 2015 Cartographic Review Read More »
I’ve been buying old-school fantasy RPG zines like a madman (and writing about them here on Yore), and storing them was becoming a bit unwieldy. Enter the Zine Vault, from Stormlord Publishing. It’s box! Specifically, a stout little 9″x6″x1.375″ box with a sharp black interior, the perfect size for most RPG zines. (But not all!
The Zine Vault, a rather nice box for your zines 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 »
As of today, I’m no longer running or contributing to Gnome Stew. There’s no drama or bad blood, it was just time for me to stop, and fortunately the Stew’s own John Arcadian is taking over — the site is in great hands. Today feels super-weird. The Stew has been a fixture in my life
Stepping down from Gnome Stew Read More »
