“Chase Scenes” in D&D are unsatisfying. For a few years now, I’ve been content with LotFP’s 1d20 + [Mov/10] rule. But that’s a stopgap. It gets the job done, but it doesn’t satisfy. Escaping from combat should be more variable.| Papers & Pencils
The other day I was getting ready for an upcoming session of ORWA. Much of the adventure was going to involve the players interacting with various factions. As I wrote up the notes I thought I would need, it dawned on me that over the past year of running this game I’ve come up with a fairly robust set of tools for faction management. It happened without me even noticing, so I never really put it all together in writing. It doesn’t have all the features that I want a faction system to hav...| Papers & Pencils
Hi everybody! Its been a minute. How are you? Everything is awful all the time? Horrors never cease? You’re being driven mad by the weight of the unfathomable evils in which you are partially complicit? Same, bestie. Anyway, I’ve finally completed production of Blogs on Tape season 6, which will be releasing on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday … Continue reading Blogs on Tape season 6 has begun!| Papers & Pencils
Coactus Illustration © Heather Gwinn. A gift she gave me in 2013 for an edition of Miscreated Creatures which I hope exists someday. Coloring by me. I am abysmal at keeping you folk in the loop. Here’s some stuff you might want to know: On January 10 2024 we lost Jennell Jaquays. The hobby owes … Continue reading Housekeeping 2024| Papers & Pencils
Sanctimonious Slimes Versus Expired Epicures is the first adventure module written for Errant. It will also be my first properly printed book. The kind with an inventory that needs to go in a warehouse somewhere! We’re running a short campaign for this one, and there are only 6 days left until it’s over, so get … Continue reading Go back my first Kickstarter!| Papers & Pencils
I found these old cards at a thrift store a few years back, and sent out the very last of them this year. Inside it says “I hope yule log on for the holidays,” which is just delightfully corny. In the ’90s I would have found it gauche, but with 30 years of hindsight it … Continue reading D&D Christmas Carols: Hark! I Am a Hireling| Papers & Pencils
The Original Dungeons & Dragons published in the Three Little Brown Books is a delightful and frustrating game. It’s good simple fun, with some real virtues that had already been diluted or lost by the time of Holmes, Moldvay, and the Advanced edition of the game. OD&D was my introduction to the OSR, through Brendan’s … Continue reading Fantastic Medieval Campaigns| Papers & Pencils
It’s happening right now! 26 episodes! 8 hours of RPG thoughts, theories, and flavor for your listening enjoyment! Back up, what is this about? Blogs on Tape is a podcast with a very simple purpose: we find good blog posts from the OSR and adjacent RPG scenes, and we perform readings of them. Each episode … Continue reading Blogs on Tape Season 5 Has Begun!| Papers & Pencils
When your character drops to 0 hit points1 in On A Red World Alone, two things happen:| Papers & Pencils
Coactus Illustration © Heather Gwinn. A gift she gave me in 2013 for an edition of Miscreated Creatures which I hope exists someday. Coloring by me. | www.paperspencils.com
Update (September 23, 2022): After many years of playing with this method, I’ve iterated on it many times. You may want to check out “Structuring Encounter Tables, Amended & Restated.”| Papers & Pencils
The current incarnation of On a Red World Alone has been an experiment with a novel procedure of play. The primary aim is to compress the traditional adventurer-to-conqueror campaign structure, so domain play can occur from the first session without ever displacing adventure play.| Papers & Pencils
Update January 10, 2023: This post has won the Gold Bloggie for best Advice Post! Holy crap I am floored. Thank you everyone who voted for me, or who voted for one of the other posts, or who wrote one of the other posts, and thank you to Prismatic Wasteland for running this event. Being recognized feels nice 😀| Papers & Pencils
Before there was On a Red World Alone, there was Dungeon Moon. I spent hundreds of hours working on on that game, and to this day I love it as much as anything I’ve ever done. For years, friends have been gently pestering me to get it written up and published, which I would like to do someday. The only problem is that Dungeon Moon was an unplayable mess.| Papers & Pencils
Spell lists feel wrong to me. Magic is a rare and eldritch thing, feared and hated by decent folk. To quote James Raggi, “Magic is art, not science. Each work of magic […] is something that must be done from scratch each time. Merely replicating what has already been done will never work.” Given that, it seems strange that magic in most games is restricted to a static list of 20 spells per level.| Papers & Pencils
Update January 15, 2024: This post has won the Bronze Bloggie in the Gameable category! My thanks to everyone involved. It’s easy to feel like blog posts disappear into the past, forgotten a few days after they are written. Having my work recognized by my peers is encouraging. Thank you for running this year, Zedeck. Also, neener neener, so long as I don’t win I don’t gotta put any work in next year!| Papers & Pencils
This post is an update to my 2017 essay “Structuring Encounter Tables.” It’s intended to replace that earlier version, and thus includes a bit of self-plagiarism.| Papers & Pencils