One of the great things about Hal Foster’s seminal Prince Valiant is that from very early on, Foster demonstrates how medieval combat was inextricably entwined with wrestling. The sequence below is one of the earliest examples, Val is losing versus the quarterstaff and resorts to grappling. It’s an early example, but the strip is full […]| Fluid — Druid
AD&D is pretty famous for having a fairly extensive weapons list, including in particular quite a lot of different types of pole arm. However, a couple of recent videos (here and here) by the esteemable Matt Easton of the YouTube channel Scholagladiatoria recently made some points that reminded me of things I’ve noticed are missing […]| Fluid — Druid
Inspired by this proposal to runs a Pancho Villa Expedition for AD&D/Boot Hill. It seems like if this is to be done, we need stats for the equipment of the time. With information from the artic…| Fluid -- Druid
Remember those heady days just after Magic: The Gathering came out, when all of a sudden any TTRPG related publisher decided to push out their own trading card game? Well, so does Atlas Games it seems, who have been sitting on unopened “On the Edge” boxes for the last 30 years and are still selling […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Y…eah. I mean, I have been doing these things for old DSA scenarios already, so now I get to do them for old Shadowrun ones as well. And Dreamchipper definitely is one of the oldest ones on the block, technically the second of independent scenarios after DNA/DOA (and the fourth after the venerated Food Fight […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Last week we had the 26th session of my Glimmermark Labyrinth Lord game, which makes for a game about every 2 weeks on average since I started in July 2024. Unfortunately sometimes it’s just not possible to find enough people to play, even if I offered the game as an open table game. We decided […]| Stuffed Crocodile
With the working draft of this adventure set (more or less), I a new struggle presents itself: designing side-quests.| Scopique’s
Something I have never done before, but I hope it helps me keep things straight.| Scopique’s
Put some thoughts on a Discord server:| Traverse Fantasy
This is partly my attempt to modularize more complex rules from Cinco! (I can’t decide how to type that) as opt-in rules for characters, as well as coming up with additional ones because they’d make more sense as special abilities than as general (if complex) rules. The following subsystems would be impacted and restricted only to characters with the appropriate feats:| Traverse Fantasy
Hi all! I've been sneakily uploading changes to my home game Cinco! over the past month. Here's a changelog: Armor items act as a virtual ...| traversefantasy.blogspot.com
As of this date, I haven’t really done any product reviews. I don’t reckon I’ll be doing many. Unless, discussion of old games is considered a product review. But, nonetheless, I …| Fluid -- Druid
It might have been visible in my post from yesterday, but I don’t actually like Oriental Adventures. The original ’85 AD&D book that is. The book purports to give rules for an ̶…| Stuffed Crocodile
Had such a fun session of my home campaign! Got to use my new travel rules and (due to the all-you-can-roll nature of them) honestly I had to convince my friends to end each leg of the trip to actually play where they were wanting to go... But we love it when journeys aren't about the destination, right? The rulebook for Cinco! now has all the latest updates I've been using to play if you're curious :) I'm tired and a little buzzed so I'm gonna summarize this session with bullet points.| Traverse Fantasy
(Previous Post)| Traverse Fantasy
I did the oopsie of assuming that a controversial, or at least non-consensus, position was actually a non-controversial consensus. From “Inaugurating the Icon0clasm Ball”:| Traverse Fantasy
The true picture of the past whizzes by. Only as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held fast. “The truth will not run away from us” – this remark by Gottfried Keller denotes the exact place where historical materialism breaks through historicism’s picture of history. For it is an irretrievable picture of the past, which threatens to disappear with every present, which does not recognize itself as meant in it.| Traverse Fantasy
One common complaint about feats or even class features is that they foreclose particular actions from characters in general by cloistering them within specific character options. For this reason, I tend to like what I currently have going on in my home game CINCO, where a character's equipment in combination with their aspects determines their capabilities, which feels both more flexible and more natural.| Traverse Fantasy
I like fluxcrawls, but there's little choice involved as such. Instead of rolling for a random event or the quality of an event, check D20: on 9–, pick 1; on 10–19, pick 2; on 20+, pick 3:| Traverse Fantasy
The last couple of years, there has been a lot of talk about Braunsteins. Braunstein is of course the historical and ongoing game by David Wesley that deals with Prussian politics in the town of Braunstein. But, I use a Braunstein in the historical use of the term, meaning similar games in settings different from […]| Fluid — Druid
In my previous posts on Boot Hill I discussed animals and random encounters. This is about professions or classes. Boot Hill is a little unusual as role playing games go in that it contains little discussion about characters classes. Class used here is in the sense it’s used in Dungeons and Dragons. Perhaps, a better […]| Fluid — Druid
In an earlier post, I discussed the spear versus the dagger efficacy versus the armors available in AD&D. I also present, more generally, the entire list of weapons and how they’d fare ve…| Fluid -- Druid
I have been thinking of making this table for a while, and right now am working on it for the Grenzland zine. The inspiration for this is of course the Campaign Event table in Oriental Adventures, …| Stuffed Crocodile
Random Tables d72 Squires (Bastionland) D6 Social Media Services of the Near-Future (Archons March On) D6x6 Sanguine Sirens (Archons March On) d100 – Wilderness Woes & Hinterland Hazards (d4 Ca…| Stuffed Crocodile
When a game has a lot of rules, very detailed character creation, and a generous helping of math, it is usually referred to as being “crunchy”. If that is true, then the horror RPG Dread is an adventure trope quicksand pit disguised as a bowl of pudding. When I arrived at RPG-A-THON on Saturday afternoon, I stopped at the Extra Life table. I had just missed their morning block of play-anything drop-in sessions, but I was intrigued by what they were setting up. The table had “character s...| therathole.ca
It’s time for an early access review of Starfinder 2nd The post Starfinder 2nd Edition Player Core! appeared first on POCGamer.| POCGamer
I love science fiction. Ever since I read Crisis on| POCGamer
Some people like to pick a theme song for the campaigns they are setting up. It just occurred to me what would be the perfect one for Iridium Moons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di60NYGu03Y| Spriggan's Den
Hi all! Hosting The Icon0clastic Ball on Itch.| Traverse Fantasy
There was a certain graffiti during the attempted 1968 revolution in France: "Structures do not walk on the streets!" Žižek summarizing Lacan (haven't read Seminar XVII unfortunately) submits that the opposite is true, and this is where one might appreciate his relative conservatism: that the street fights between the student revolutionaries and the police were in fact expressive of and overdetermined by the social order, which is in a constant and dynamic process of self-definition (comp...| Traverse Fantasy
There has been a fair amount of confusion about how surprise is conducted in AD&D 1e. I don’t know why because right there on page 61 of the DMG it says: Surprise is basically self-explanatory. Well then no more need be said. For something so self-explanatory, there is a lot of confusion. I’ll say a […]| Fluid — Druid
It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned this, but I’m not a great GM. It never has been my passion and recent real world challenges have made it nearly impossible for me. As a result, I try to avoid a lot of the more open world games, in favour of prewritten adventures that might be derogatorily referred to as railroad adventures. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love throwing a curveball at players. Enter Jason Anachy’s recent Ridiculous Loot Deck.| therathole.ca
104 days of summer vacation seems a lifetime away for you and I…. Nevertheless, today we join the boy geniuses of Phineas and Ferb in a social matrix game podcast actual play episode! Is it r…| DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER
Traveller is an endlessly fascinating game to explore in the 2020s. Its first release was only three years after Dungeons & Dragons, but unlike D&D, which really is just a name and a couple of archetypes attached to a number of very different games, the revised 2nd edition Traveller from Mongoose has changed very little … Continue reading "Traveller is Retro-Futuristic"| Spriggan's Den
Let me introduce Bold Against Monsters. (You can call it BAM.). This is a new D&D 5E compatible rules-light Role Playing Game that I – the Old Dungeon Master – just finished writing…| Dungeon Master Assistance
Finally published the 'dry' version of CINCO! Table-Talk Odyssey on Itch! If you're seeing this here then you probably know what its deal is, but essentially: this is my home campaign ruleset, which are meant to isolate the character-driven dynamics of my D&D 5E subculture into something geared specifically towards making silly quirky characters and playing with them. The setting is... pirates, or really like... Haitian revolution... Caribbean. Yeah :D Also Norn Noszka illustrated the boo...| Traverse Fantasy
I left my Switch at home so I've been borrowing my partner's to play her copy of Shadows Over Loathing , a silly quirky goofy point-and-cli...| traversefantasy.blogspot.com
Those of you that know how I feel about modern D&D vs old school D&D are probably shocked to see that I’m posting an article for Daggerheart. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised I even pulled the trigger and bought a copy. After all, if you paid any attention to the hype surrounding this release, you have probably heard that Daggerheart...|
This post is inspired by this video. Though this one pretty much sums up my conclusions pretty well. In summary, Shad’s argument goes like this, when held up next to one another a dagger and …| Fluid -- Druid
Crypts and Creatures! “I smite thee with a magic missile! MAGIC MISSILE!” My buddy Kyle Burger and I played a social matrix game, a kind of storygame with incredibly simple rules: Start…| DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER
Listen, I’m a snob in many areas, but especially in how I have fun. If a game is pitched to me as “popular”, I’m wary of it. “Everyone’s doing it” is one o…| DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER
Starfinder. It’s the literal future of the Pathfinder setting, taking The post The Starfinder Galaxy Guide appeared first on POCGamer.| POCGamer
There is sometimes a habit, when it comes to sci-fi| POCGamer
Last week I found Wanderer Bill’s Grenzland 5 in my mailbox. Topic “Science Fantasy”. The zine costs 5 Euros for a hardcopy, but can be downloaded for free. As the topic goes into the realm of science fiction there’s plenty of that in this issue. Most of the articles are in German, some are English […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Calibre, if you are not aware, is an open source ebook management system. It’s one of the best and most easily available ways to manage a collection of electronic books. It stores books in a …| Stuffed Crocodile
(This is a slightly cleaned up version of my two Bluesky threads on Jennell Jaquays, preserved in a hopefully easier to read format. Thank Amanda P for reminding me that having these things stored …| Pathika
I'm working on aggregating the posts on this blog into a big book so I can eventually delete it for my personal safety, considering the stat...| traversefantasy.blogspot.com
Subtitle: Being in the Main a Game of the Life and Times of a Gentleman Adventurer and his Several Companions I was woefully ignorant about En Garde! (mind the exclamation mark) until recently, whe…| Stuffed Crocodile
There are a lot of great generic (read: setting &| POCGamer
On Garlic Presses and tabletop roleplaying games| Weird Wonder - Amanda P.'s blog
with special thanks to Nick L.S. Whelan.| Weird Wonder - Amanda P.'s blog
Like a great many people who witnessed WotC’s fall from grace in January of 2023, I was filled with a sudden curiosity to play new tabletop games. I had already been playing small indie games from itch.io such as Apothecaria and Ebb Tide, but those were all solo games; I wanted to bring something to… Continue reading TTRPG Thoughts: Call of Cthulhu 7e Starter Set→| A Queer Dungeoneer
A Torch in the Dark is a solo TTRPG by Michael Elliott with a focus on fantasy dungeon crawling. One plays as a survivor of the Peoples’ Revolution, a person who is haunted by the ghost of the mother of that revolution as they attempt to silence the unquiet spirits of the slain nobility through… Continue reading TTRPG Thoughts: A Torch in the Dark→| A Queer Dungeoneer
Goblin Market is a journaling RPG created by Eliot Silvarian. It requires no GM and can be played solo or (as Eliot recommends) with 1-4 players. This game was inspired by the poem of the same name by Christina Rossetti, as well as the creations of the early twentieth century British illustrator known as Arthur… Continue reading TTRPG Thoughts: Goblin Market→| A Queer Dungeoneer
This table was inspired by a quote from Robin D. Laws’ saying When in doubt, blindfold yourself, take any two GURPS sourcebooks off the shelf at random, and combine the results. Ok, this is a bit pointless but also… not. I mean, who has a d140 anyway? Or in fact even so many GURPS books? […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Last Thursday we wrapped up the Grenzland Diplomacy play-by-post game we were playing for the last few days. At least for the season.So the Grenzland campaign (tl.: Borderland) is an ODnD campaign run by Wanderer Bill for the last few years. There already was a lot of history that has been happening in this campaign, […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Ages ago (2011?) I found a Star Wars OSR retroclone called Star Wars – Galactic Adventures on the venerable wizardawn.com page, now lost to the wages of net history. (…that was before there was an actual Star Wars product, a kids’ book, using the same title…) For some reason it never really caught on in […]| Stuffed Crocodile
I currently am running a Labyrinth Lord Open Table every Tuesday at 8.15pm CET for 2 hours on the Grenzland Discord Server. Sign-ups are via the Norn bot in channel #glimmermark. A wiki page for the game exists. The Glimmermark is a is a border march of the Kingdom of Brillon, once a core province […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Not sure how many people are interested in it considering this is an English-language blog and this is a (largely) German-language campaign newsletter… but anyway, here is issue 2 of Glimmermärkische Zeytungen. I decided to create an In-Game chronicle here, as written by the scribe on Castle Aberwacht. Which largely concerns the doings of the […]| Stuffed Crocodile
It’s the first time I actually feel the amount of times I played in a year worth mentioning. I had a rather successful 2024 in terms of ttrpg gaming. If my reckoning is correct (and I think I might miss a few) I played 56 sessions of roleplaying games this year. And this doesn’t take […]| Stuffed Crocodile
There are no Glimmermark games for the next two weeks. Which means there also are no expeditions into the wilderness or the local dungeons as we are running on a 1:1 campaign time scale, with every week in real life being about a week in the game.But why is that? I mean, why is that […]| Stuffed Crocodile
During my excursions into reaction rolls for Traveller lately I realized that the Traveller book has a template for how to create rumor tables (or just come up with rumors on the fly). Unlike other games (uhm… DnD) which never get into this deeper than having a rumor table in some of their scenarios. This […]| Stuffed Crocodile
As we all know Shields Shall be Splintered! Shields For our Glimmermark game we agreed that shields are a necessity for the aspiring adventurer, as they allow you to soak one damage roll by sacrificing the shield. Critical Fails and Critical Hits The whole idea of a crit on a natural 1 or 20 was […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Ho humm… these link collections are getting a bit long sometimes, especially if I don’t actually post them for a while. Free Stuff Goblinoid Games offers a draft of the Labyrinth Lord 2nd edition on their website Pocket Basic Rules for OSR (drivethrurpg) Random Tables Where Did I Get These Spells From? (Elfmaids & Octopi) […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Goblin (Character Class)Req.: DEX 9 and CON 9Prime Reqs: STR and DEXHD: 1d8 (as monster HD)Max Level: 6Fighting: As equivalent monster HDSaves: As Fighter Goblin Level Progression Experience Level Hit Dice (1d8) 0 1 1-1 1.000 2 1 2.000 3 2 8.000 4 3 32.000 5 3+1 65.000 6 3+2 A goblin usually is slightly […]| Stuffed Crocodile
It wasn’t all doom and gloom and Satanic panicking in the 80s about rolepaying games. Dynamite Magazine actually had a few features about this new sort of game, and they all have a rather positive spin on the whole enterprise. The famous one is of course the one with the cool homebuilt Dungeon Grognardia and […]| Stuffed Crocodile
I am preparing for a Traveller game, and so here are a few conceits that bear repeating for understanding the setting and the rules properly. In a lot of cases those are truisms or commonplaces, but I think it helps to keep them in mind. Space is vast “Space is big. You just won’t believe […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Learning Magic in the GlimmermarkWhen I started to plan for the Glimmermark one of my main ideas was to make it even more Vancian, instead of getting rid of the Vancianess like many people would prefer to. Magic needs to be rare, mystical, and hard to get. Magic effects need to be dangerous and closely […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Reaction Rolls and Morale for MGT 2e I am prepping for a Pirates of Drinax campaign right now, and as the current version of that is for Mongoose Traveller we are going to use that edition. There is something to be said about the way the newer edition (now even with a refreshed look for […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Free Stuff Pendragon Quick-Start with “The Adventure of the Sword Tournament” (chaosium.com) “The Quest of the Red Blade” by Greg Stafford (itch.io) “The Adventure of the Great Hunt” by Greg Stafford (itch.io) D&D 2024 Free Rules (dndbeyond.com) Random Tables 1d60 Ways to Seal a Pact (Dice in the North) d100 – Retainer Refusals & Hireling […]| Stuffed Crocodile
Settlements are the cornerstone of a lot of tabletop RPG| POCGamer
Her Odyssey is a solo journaling TTRPG that uses the Caltrop Core system developed by Titanomachy. The game was created by Kaiya and is free to download and play. In Her Odyssey, you play as a wand…| A Queer Dungeoneer
NPCs are a continuous challenge to a GM. Stat lines,| POCGamer
Let’s face it, does AD&D 1e really need another pole arm? Not really. Gary Gygax already provided a pretty detailed list. Plus, given the variation in historical pole axes, the already pr…| Fluid -- Druid
Not so long ago, in discussion with the bros, it came up how in AD&D 1e swords predominate over other magic weapons. Indeed, magic long swords predominate over other types of magic swords. And,…| Fluid -- Druid
At the end of the recent Arbiter of Worlds stream, with Alexander Macris and Harmony Ginger, the issue of game rulings and precedent came up. I commented in the chat my view that rulings should not…| Fluid -- Druid
In AD&D, a typical movement rate is 12″ per round. Cursory review of the missile weapon ranges shows that for most weapons an infantry unit moving to engage in melee with a unit of missil…| Fluid -- Druid
In my previous column here, I suggested that cavalry may be the best unit type to use against trolls in AD&D. Not just because the damage advantage of the lance at the charge, but because the c…| Fluid -- Druid
If you want some persona-like or magical girl narratives in your ttrpgs and like your DnD 5e games, then here are two reasons Magi Knights Awakening should be your next game. What is Magi Knights Awakening? Magi Knights Awakening, designed by Derek Salgy and published by Magi-Knights Project LLC, is a ttrpg which builds on […]| The Bardic Inquiry
Node-based design was created by Justin Alexander of the Alexandrian and was, primarily, a method for planning and running mystery ttrpg campaigns. Though it can be divisive in the ttrpg community, I was planning to run a mystery campaign in Night’s Black Agents and I did not believe my usual method would work. I thought […]| The Bardic Inquiry
[Leckie rolled a Shining Headgear on the Kata Kumbas Mage Starting Equipment Table, so as it is tradition I am compelled to do some worldbuilding, and trying to write for fun. The Shining Headgear is a conical wizard hat with a rounded top, ear covers and a cute trim, with Continual Light cast on it. […]| Lost Pages
Beautiful Yet Lost features, tuckered away in its ruins, sort-of-industrial, mostly broken down machinery. Maybe it’s an automated pita maker. Maybe it’s a vat that brews brews. Maybe it’s a statue-replicator. Maybe it’s an ornithopter. Regardless: They often do not work perfectly. And, sometimes, fail catastrophically. This is how I’m trying to handle them. Machine […]| Lost Pages
This blogpost was first released in my Patreon last week. Consider supporting! I wanted to make warrior backgrounds this month. Again, these are all subjec…| Goobernuts' Blog
So we talked about Drinax and what the UWP implies, but what does life there actually look like on the ground? Well, quite terrible really. There’s not too many people around. The population …| Stuffed Crocodile
Two gamifications of contemporary political resistance| Līber Lūdōrum
This blogpost was first released in my Patreon last week. Consider supporting! It’s been 2 weeks since my first post here on Patreon. I’ve b…| Goobernuts' Blog
Modern gaming isn’t “broken”. It’s not “pandering”. And diversity doesn’t| POCGamer
There has been a recent trend towards “point crawl” style dungeons, and for a long time people have planned their dungeons in this way only drawing the actual spaces later. I think this kind of design is very visible on these maps. Rooms connected by single neglected corridors. This trend makes sense in the history […]| Fae Errant
So awhile back, I took a break to focus on actually playing RPGs and have taken that time to play a bunch of (mainly NSR) RPGs. As expected this has been a huge boon to the development of FAE as first hand experience always is. I’d like to talk about how I ended up not […]| Fae Errant
Alternative Title: RPGS are Folklore, and it’s consequences (Sorry for the long hiatus, I’ve had a lot of health things going on, and am doing my best.) Strap in this one is long, but I’ve broken it into two sections. First, about Folklore, second about the “quality” homebrew dungeon content. Part 0: Introduction So FAE […]| Fae Errant
Cosy games have taken off, and this has lead to a bunch of people talking at length and attempting to bring their favourite genre to a new medium: TTRPGs. There is just one issue, some people poo poo the idea, saying that it just doesn’t work for one reason or another. I want to quickly […]| Fae Errant
I am not the first person to say this about RPGs, but mediums have strengths and weaknesses. Every creative medium has some sort of limits or boundaries that are usually informed by their physical medium of conveyance. Paintings are typically on a flat canvas, film must pass into a camera lens, theatre must fit on […]| Fae Errant
I had a huge chronic pain flare up this week and wasn’t able to work on that collaboration post. I’m starting to feel a little better and thought I’d write something small, or two small things and put them together into one medium sized post. Less is More I like the bookkeeping aspect of RPGs. […]| Fae Errant
Art by Richard Powers So as I mentioned I am preparing to run a Pirates of Drinax campaign and as I talked about in the article one should not see the UWPs of certain worlds as holy writ. Which is …| Stuffed Crocodile
Thank y'all so much for y'all's interest in the last one! Will respond when I can, just preparing for a (nice) busy week and weekend :) in a...| traversefantasy.blogspot.com
I don’t think I’ve ever done a review where I The post Mythic Pathfinder: A Double Review! appeared first on POCGamer.| POCGamer
Traveller is the original sci-fi tabletop RPG, released in 1977.| POCGamer
Procedure? I hardly know her! Harharharharhar. Travel, exploration, combat. That's what we're talking about. Wait, what's this? DISCLAIMER...| traversefantasy.blogspot.com
Okay so basically last Friday I was going to post about play procedures—the basic bitch shit for travel, exploration, and combat—but then I ...| traversefantasy.blogspot.com
