Like all of the advice in Worlds Without Number, the stuff about cities gets straight to the point: put the capital in the center of the best arable land, on water; put other cities on water, and near resources; if you stick one in the middle of nowhere, assume there’s a kingdom-level water source not […]
Building the Unlucky Isles: “The Region,” part three Read More »
This morning in the shower it hit me that in a region called “the Unlucky Isles,” with six kingdoms, only three of those kingdoms were fully contained within the Isles (the other three stretch off the map) — and one of those is “fantasy Switzerland.” Would that generate enough local conflict to fuel adventures? But
Building the Unlucky Isles: “The Region,” part two Read More »
In yesterday’s post I sketched out some high-concept stuff about Godsbarrow, and having finished Worlds Without Number‘s “The World” steps I’m moving on to “The Region” — the slice of Dormiir called the Unlucky Isles. As with the first Dormiir post, large portions of this one are pretty raw — more or less straight from
Building the Unlucky Isles: “The Region,” part one Read More »
Earlier today, a chance comment on RPGnet alerted me to the release of Worlds Without Number ([paid link]; there’s also a free version of the game [paid link]), Kevin Crawford’s fantasy version of Stars Without Number ([paid link]; and again, there’s a free SWN [paid link]), which I immediately bought. That in turn led me
Dormiir, also called Godsbarrow: worldbuilding using Worlds Without Number Read More »
Picking up a second-wave Indomitus box marks the first time since I got into 40k minis that I’ve bought models outside one of my chosen factions. I know I could Ebay the Necron half of my set and plow those funds into Orks or Blood Angels, but I’ve been looking ahead to 2021 (much of
A strong contender for a third 40k army, Necrons, and a Yore milestone Read More »
This morning, out of the blue, it hit me that I can summarize my approach to GMing tabletop RPGs in a single, concise principle: There is no curtain. The curtain is, of course, a reference to The Wizard of Oz — in which a curtain conceals what the titular Wizard is actually up to in
There is no curtain Read More »
I was going to do a Twitter thread while playing through Thousand Year Old Vampire (TYOV), a solo RPG by Tim Hutchings in which you’re an awful, awful vampire, but couldn’t figure out how to provide a meaningful content warning that would 1) persist and 2) allow people to avoid the whole thread while 3)
RPG actual play: Thousand Year Old Vampire Read More »
My copy of Tim Hutchings’ Thousand Year Old Vampire came in the mail, and daaaaaaaaaamn this book slaps. That spot foil — the gold bits — looks like kintsugi. The stamps look so real I want to peel them off. I opened the front cover and literally went, “What the hell, why did Tim write
Thousand Year Old Vampire is one of the most gorgeous RPG books I’ve ever seen Read More »
The current owner of Judges Guild, Robert Bledsaw II, doubled — hell, quadrupled — down on his antisemitic and bigoted statements. Tenkar’s Tavern has Bledsaw II’s post, which . . . well let’s just say it starts off with “My family crest attests to 3 European Crusades, and I regard that as a calling” and
Judges Guild can fuck right off Read More »
As a longtime fan of Judges Guild’s output from the 1970s and early 1980s (they turned out some wild, creative stuff back in the day), I was dismayed to learn that the current owner, Robert (Bob) Bledsaw II, posts racist, Nazi, and antisemitic bullshit on Facebook. Bob Bledsaw II needs to unequivocally apologize, make amends,
