The DTRPG thing that happened a few weeks ago has since sunk beneath newer waves of controversy and internet turmoil and far-right activist...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
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
Last weekend was UK Games Expo at the NEC in Birmingham and, as always, we had a fantastic time playing games, hanging out with lovely friends, and buying stuff. Friday was all about D&D Adventurers League and the new adventures I’ve been working on with David Wright, Ian Hawthorne, and Colin Tweddle from Polyhedral Adventures,Continue reading "D&D Adventurers League & More at UK Games Expo 2025"| Richard Green | Game Designer
Is there anything interesting left to say about TTRPG skills? Probably not. But sometimes the brain itches, and writing down a bunch of stuff that other people have said a million times before, but slightly different this time, scratches the itch.| 1999 A.D.
"Arabs in a Cave by the Sea" by Mariano Fortuny Marsal| 1999 A.D.
Hey, everybody else is doing it! (Or praising it. Mostly praising it, actually.) I know, Mom, “everybody else is doing it” isn't a good excu...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
Thank you to everyone who tuned in to the livestream playtest of my in-development tabletop game Witch Which? on May 28th 2025, and to anyone who’s watched it on Twitch since. The recording is now available on the Historical Games NetworkYouTube channel with improved audio, and embedded below (content note: the playtest includes themes of historical witchcraft trials […]| Historical Games Network
"The Laboratory" by Nick Stath Those who do not trust their minds and souls to the inscrutable alien engines that follow the courses of the ...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
LIFE CYCLE A seed from a divine source, the tree it grows into, and the demon that follows. +++ THIRTY YEARS AGO, AS THE SUN SET Prau Sa Pritiya danced. Her chest shivered, her hips swayed—she so stirred the god of hunters that he shook his house of sky. That night there was a meteor shower: the stars fell, and set the forest afire. That night the god of hunters fell in love with Prau Sa Pritiya. + STAR SEED Divine milt. Freshly spilt, it burns hot as a furnace. Any tool forged in its heat ...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
It's hard to see the world through the eyes of somebody who doesn't know what you know, especially when it comes to really fundamental knowl...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
"Anthill Stories—Arcade" by Marat Zakirov| 1999 A.D.
Selections from the Tarot de Carlotydes (my personal fave)| 1999 A.D.
So, like I said in the last post, I've been reading, and loving, Outcast Silver Raiders. One of the choices it makes that I'm enjoying is presenting the players with no racial (ancestry, species) options up front—everybody's a human by default. The game gives the GM a bunch of the trad demihuman options in the back of the book…but then actively discourages them from actually using those options. An all-human party makes a lot of sense for the Mythic North setting in particular (weird, gri...| 1999 A.D.
"Cosmic Tree (Pochote)" by Jesús Lozano Paredes| 1999 A.D.
(Photo by Shuyi) A CROCODILE, EATING is an installation work, ritual performance, and shrine. It is part of WEIRD HOPE ENGINES, a contemporary visual art exhibition about tabletop roleplaying games, running at Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, UK from now until 10 May 2025. If you ask me to build a world, I will build a crocodile. On linoleum flooring, stones are arranged into the shape of a saltwater crocodile. Embedded in the stones, on the crocodile’s back, are bowls, jars and platters of a...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
A bunch of dice-rolling rubrics I've adopted for stuff that keeps coming up in our campaign: SEXUALITY (AND GENDER, HALF-ASSEDLY) Certai...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
JUDGEMENT IS A BLADE She is a good sorcerer, but a poor disciple. She finds it difficult to concentrate. When she arrives the bell has been struck—the lesson has already started. The teacher looks at her sideways. The teacher sighs, closes his eyes, and continues. “Judgement is a blade,” he says. “When you judge another,” the teacher says, “you thrust a dagger at their chest. It may be that you cause a wound.” She sits on her meditation cushion, and tries to settle. “When you ...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
"Investigation" by Maxime BiBi Continued from Chapter 7 . * * * Faisal Rao, director of the Sokhna office of GeOpis, is as good as his word....| 1999ad.blogspot.com
THE PONTIANAK, IN FICTION The following is one of a pairs of essays I wrote as a Stretch Goal for A PERFECT WIFE. Pretty basic stuff for hantu aficionados, of course. But it is designed as orientation for GMs / players who are unfamiliar with the Malaysian context—a primer of the pontianak’s pop-cultural significance; an author’s note for why I wanted to treat her story the way I did. This essay—alongside another essay titled “The Supernatural, in Southeast Asia—will appear as app...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
Celistic Concept Art by Maxim Revin| 1999 A.D.
"Alien Construct Interior" by Alan Dickinson| 1999 A.D.
What happens when a toxic man forcibly marries a murderous vampiress? A PERFECT WIFE is an adventure of contemporary supernatural horror, featuring the Malaysian pontianak, set in modern-day Kuala...| Tumblr
"Industrial District 2" by Andreas Rocha| 1999 A.D.
"Exodus" by Sparth| 1999 A.D.
A PERFECT WIFE (It is Vampire Weekend! Have a pontianak-themed urban-horror investigative adventure. I wrote it with Kuala Lumpur in mind, but it should work for any big city just fine.) +++ DISAPPEARANCES An inner-city neighbourhood, too ugly for gentrification. Refugees have settled here. They fled war in their own country. But they have not escaped violence. People work basement sweatshops, or clean toilets in nightclubs. They stumble home in the morning dark. At dawn, their neighbours fin...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
EDIT: Freddie Foulds over on Bluesky found the post for me! It was a Chris McDowall post: Alien Dojos. This is now a fan post about the genius that is Alien Dojos. Every martial art described there (for use with Into The Odd) has a resolution mechanic that involves doing something tactile with dice, beyond just rolling. For “Bafistan Fist Fighting” each punch is a d6, “rolled” by “throwing them into the air and punching them”—but you have to punch them in such a way they still l...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
This post is a brain-fart—me trying to jot a thought, lurking and seeing TTRPG folks react to GNS Theory for the upteenth time. + Context: GNS Theory seeks to frame, understand, categorise, and model tabletop roleplay—and, via this framework, suggest solutions and improvements to the craft of TTRPG design as a whole. Understanding GNS Theory, it is asserted, will allow you to create better-designed (“more coherent”) games. Edwards compares the utility of understanding GNS to that of u...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
The opening of my soon-to-be-real Cairn RPG adventure, The Tide Returning, is a crime scene. The king of Zum and his sceptre has gone missing in the night. Hired to find him, you are allowed a tour of the royal bedchambers, to find clues to where he’s gone. Design objectives for this opening: Give players an idea of who and where their quarry is. Who did the king prefer spending time with? Why did he write a letter to the governor of a nearby town? Why was he swimming the span of the canal?...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
David Blandy + Daniel Locke’s post-apocalyptic hopepunk TTRPG ECO MOFOS is back from the printers. Meaning it will soon be in our hands. Am fairly hyped for it, because I wrote an adventure! To Put Away A Sword is about the woes of building a home on poisoned earth. The terrible powers that hurtled us to the end of the world continue to bear bitter fruit in your garden. You are villagers living under the shadow of a fallen giant mecha. Its reactors and warheads leak into your groundwater, p...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
Ngeng ap Ten was no grandaunt then—her breasts stood high, her arms were masts, her hair flowed like the night breeze freely. And like all young chieftesses she was quick to folly. She would not flee from a fight. She looked at the Zum King, saw his soft belly, his pale lips. She judged that she could not lose. She would have been right. She kissed her spear and said: “I accept your challenge, o king. Should I win you will never seek me again, and live in peace always.” He pointed his s...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
So: I do not like the idea of TTRPGs making formal mechanics designed to incentivise ethical play. But, to be honest, I do not like the idea of any single game pushing any particular formal mechanics about ethical play at all. So here I am, trying to think through the reasons why, and proposing a solution. (Sort of. A procedure, really.) + Assumptions: 1. Some genres of game resist ethical play. A grand strategy game dehumanises people into census data. The fun of a shooter is violence. This ...| Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours
What do you do after you've been blogging about (mostly) TTRPG stuff for half a year or so? Start joining every game jam in sight! First...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
[Labyrinth Lord] Tomb of the Serpent Kings Session 1 (also MapTool) A while ago I started playing with some people on an online server. That was about the time when I decided that I should maybe be…| Stuffed Crocodile
For a while now, I've been thinking about how to design a narrative-oriented lifepath character generator derived from Mongoose Traveller 2e...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
"Nob City" by Félicien Nourry Continued from Chapter 3 . By the time Krissa, BQ, and Batias make it to Manny's construction site (having sto...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
"City Gate" by Hector Ortiz Continued from Chapter 2 . At this point, the crew are right back where they started (meeting Elias Bensaïd at t...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
"Spaceship Cabin Interior" by Simon Murton Continued from Factions & Faction Turn 1 (and more directly from Chapter 1 ). Once the crew are ...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
"They Found Me …" by Pablo Dominguez Continued from Chapter 1 . I actually played out the first faction turn before we had our first proper ...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
Sketch by Kunrong Yap Continued from Cast and Crew . The crew gamely accepts their mission, heads to the spaceport in the company of a coupl...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
Sketch by Kunrong Yap Continued from the Prologue . I had a setting, a starting planet, and a rough idea of the first adventure I would send...| 1999ad.blogspot.com
"Zaku Relic" by Martin Parker I've been meaning to share an account of my ongoing Stars Without Number campaign for ages now —it was one of ...| 1999ad.blogspot.com