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 »
Doodle Temple and Gormand’s Larder, both illustrated by Cédric Plante, are two of the coolest gaming books I’ve bought in recent memory. They’re both dungeon generators, but instead of random tables, they consist entirely of Cédric’s beautiful illustrations. And they’re weird. I love weird! Mundane dungeons are boring, and neither of these books will turn
Doodle Temple and Gormand’s Larder: illustrated DIY dungeon generators 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 »
My wife, Alysia, got me The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (paid link) for my birthday, and it’s a fabulous book. (The rest of this post contains spoilers for the film.) I enjoy these sorts of books as a fan, but I also dig them as a gamer. I’ve written about using non-RPG
The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is great gaming fuel Read More »
While running DCC RPG (paid link) the other night, there was a good-sized chunk of time when I had my DCC core book, Expert D&D (paid link; for wilderness and reaction rules), and Crawl! #5 (paid link; for the wandering monster tables) open at the same time, along with scratch paper for hit points .
DCC RPG in 18 pages Read More »
My copy of Delving Deeper just came in the mail, and after a thorough skim I quite like it. I was after a retroclone that hews as closely as possible to OD&D[1] (paid link), and at first blush DD seems to fit the bill. But when I got to the section on dungeon stocking, it
Dungeon stocking in OD&D vs. Delving Deeper, plus The Strategic Review Read More »
More RPGs and supplements should be coil-bound, or offer a coil-bound version. Coil-bound books lay flat and stay open, making them a joy to use at the gaming table. Away from the table, I prefer perfect-bound (traditional softcover) or hardcover for reading, and hardcover for bigger table-use books (large-diameter coils suck, and a big hardcover
All hail coil-bound gaming books Read More »
I love hit points. They’re a brilliant abstraction, though often misunderstood, and they work beautifully in play. I double-super-love that in OD&D (paid link), how you roll them for your character is completely open to interpretation. I don’t think that’s been true since the late 1970s, as each edition since has spelled things out much more
Rerolling hit points, OD&D, and Empire of the Petal Throne Read More »
I just started reading William Hope Hodgson‘s 1912 weird fiction work The Night Land (paid link ; also available as a free ebook). I’m interested in it in large part because the setting sounds fabulous — and rather well-suited to gaming. I say “sounds” because I’m not that far into the book yet. It’s a
The Night Land seems ripe for gaming Read More »
It’s 1977. D&D is wild and wonderful and everyone’s doing their own thing. So much so, in fact, that in that same year two people published alternate versions of one of the core mechanics of old-school D&D: earning XP for treasure. In 1977, Dave Arneson, co-creator of D&D, and Jon Pickens, who later became an
Debauchery & Dragons: Carousing for XP, 1977 to 2015 Read More »
