Category: D&D

This is what peak dungeon design looks like. We made this dungeon on the fly using Appendix A of the greatest RPG book ever written, and it lasted for a solid three sessions of live play.  We had parties of ten, then six, then nine delve this one and...

Alexander Macris, in a recent video, set a whole bunch of really smart stuff and you should go watch that video even though some of it is wrong.  Let’s talk about it, and get it written down for posterity. For context, he is laying out one of the perceived...

We generally think about events in our games as straightforward cause and effect situations.  You call your shot, you roll your dice, you move your mice.  You swing the sword, you hit your guy, and roll for damage. Slow down a second, because there is a brief moment where...

These are some very good looking aircraft. After four decades of tinkering with weight, aerodynamics, engine power, and a host of other variables, the US produced what many consider to be the finest prop-driven fighter in the world.  These babies were designed for long range escort missions and still...

To speed up the math of character creation, and in direct response to a suggestion from one of my viewers, I built two kits for first level characters.  These are a little like the kits presented in B4: The Lost City.  With the costs and encumbrance calculated beforehand, you...

Our first pair of plucky heroes have met their end, eaten by a large pack of worgs somewhere along the road east of Corvusburg.  The don’t call it the Wolflands for nothing. Fortunately, and the elites don’t want you to know this, but first level adventurers are free.  You...

I’ll have to add a new category for this one. Over on the channel we’re having a grand old time running through a solo campaign of AD&D.  One clever viewer has asked for an upload what we’ve learned so far, the better to follow along at home. With that...

This probably looked pretty weird on the day it happened.  Let me explain. The tabletop RPG hobby has ossified. The conventions have been established, and everyone that follows those conventions can only innovate around the margins.  Or worse, they engage in a complete deconstruction without the re-construction necessary to...

A lot of tabletop gamers totally spaz out when you tell them there is a better way to olay the game they’ve been playing for 40 years.  Even guys with ten feet of shelf space dedicated to gaming advice or coil and a horror when they’re giving gaming advice. ...

In the last two posts we discussed mercenary troops from a modernist perspective.  That is to say, how does using hirelings work when it comes to spending all those gp you grabbed for XP, and how does a Square One focus on building an army contribute to the overall...