Author: Jon Mollison

College Football, We Hardly Knew Ye

Having discovered the pleasures of ten-minute game summaries on YouTube, few of which spoil the ending, I made something of a reacquaintance with college football in 2023.  It proved to be a good year to do so, as a former Michigander, it gave me great pleasure to watch from...

Site Upgrade

It’s not a huge improvement, but it should make everyone’s life a little easier. I kicked up a new page that has links to the most commonly requested resources on this site.  It’s more sparse than I expected it to be after all these years.  We’ll add to it...

In Support of the Subsystem

Single mechanic RPGs are bad, mkay? Every time you think your interest in AD&D has run its course, that you’ve done all there is to do, you find another fun little subsystem that forces you to go back to the books and explore a whole new aspect of the...

Lone Wolves and Mass Combat

Recent experiments with mass combat run using AD&D as written have been wildly successful, even as they open up new avenues of exploration. Which is a fancy and nigh-journalistic way of saying that, after two battles, a glaring hole in my understanding has been exposed. On the matter of using...

I PAINTED SOMETHING

It’s been almost 6 months since I joined the cyclops faction. I still have no depth perception, so I started by painting  something easy. Two tone ruins. Hard to screw that up.  A few miniature wargamers offered me encouragement, guys who have also suffered the loss of vision in...

Dungeon Design Training Wheels

This is an idea so brilliant, I wish I lacked the morals to claim it as my own. The power of Appendix A never ceases to amaze. Give any reasonably intelligent kid a couple run throughs of the Dungeon of Rando Death to Randos, and they will assuredly start...

D0rf Fortressing

We needed a full roster of the dwarves of Romek Zoden.  Fortunately for us, the Monster Manual provides us with some guidance.  I’ve already pushed out a YuTuub Short detailing the process, so let me just hit you with the high points. The base number of dwarves (4d10 x 10)...

AD&D Weapon Versus AC Adjustment

AD&D’s weapon versus AC adjustment table is the online recipe of tabletop RPGs.  Everybody that talks about it wants to talk around it. Or talk about their houserules. Or talk about people talking about it.  Or talk about how they calculated them better than Gary. Or sell you on...

TPK Blues

As it happens, nine first level PCs are no match for nineteen orcs, even if those orcs are dressed in fancy pants and poofy shirts. Particularly when those orcs are armed with polearms, backed by an effective leader, and on high alert. Yesterday’s delve (check the date on this...

Dungeon Design and Surprising Yourself

I’m sorry, what’s that, Gary? Don’t I tried this at home kids. In the Wolflands, while delving the local megadungeon, our intrepid heroes ran into three encounters with orc patrols. Those kinds of numbers indicate something interesting is going on. To explain the streaky nature of things, we decided...