“Rawlished”

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

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My 51 in 15

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

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Bleakstone artwork by Steve Zieser

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,

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Storylike

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

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Lulu’s Law

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.

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Prep is dead

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

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