[More Than You Know] Cha’alt: Fuchsia Malaise
Discussing a book as creative and original as Cha’alt (a setting written and designed by Venger Satanis for use with whatever iteration of the D&D tabletop RPG) presents a number of challenges for the reviewer. Specifically, the marketing hype used within the tabletop RPG market has devalued the meaning...
Grognardia Respawns
After eight years and with little fanfare, new content is up on the site. It’s just a review of some Swedish OSR product for now, but James is a smart thinker, and I look forward to his thoughts on tabletop RPGs. Hopefully we’ll get more fresh content without another...
Getting Lost in the Wilds of D&D
I’m still hip-deep in a wargaming kick and off the D&D wagon. But I thought the following might be of interest. A friend writes: I searched the PHB and DMG for any mention of having a ranger or druid prevents parties from getting lost. It does say that if...
Wizard Funk 2
Intrigued by the promise of a return to those halcyon days of the late-70s when I was too young to participate in zine culture, I threw five bucks at DiceBro for a hard copy of Wizard Funk 2. And boy howdy did I get exactly what was promised –...
A Paladin in Sloretown
For the record, that was my uber-powered Paladin trashing the tracks of the Jeffro Pacific Express Freight to Funkytown. Before we get into the view from the player side of the screen, a confession: I used this generator to roll up a fighter type and got the stats for...
The One Shot Dungeon
Tried out Roll20 for the first time this past weekend. Not for any of the functionality, just for the video conferencing feature. Two new friends had a weekend free, so they let me run a quick one-shot dungeon delve using a bastardized B/X. Basically, the B/X combat and movement,...
Ten Foot Pole – The Best Adventure Site Around
Like many writers, my first real storytelling experiences came about through tabletop RPGs. Like many gamers, I found the fiction sections included with most RPGs to be wasted space. Even worse were the needlessly convoluted backstories to otherwise simple adventures, and despite (or perhaps because of my) owning and...
Into the Dungeon: Castle Meatgrinder AP
The kids were kind enough to playtest Castle Meatgrinder over the holiday break, and we found that it needs some serious work. They had a good time, but I wasn’t satisfied with the amount of action, the speed of play, or the organization of my notes. Most important, I...
On Elves: Idle Thoughts With No Conclusion
Happy Thanksgiving! I’m grateful you’re all along for this ride. It’s been fun. Part of my decision to eschew post-1985 versions of D&D is the sheer blandness of it’s creativity. The most recent title by Wizards of the Coast, Volo’s Guide to Something or other, includes a host of...
Weirdo Beardos
One of the advantages of playing a miniature heavy version of B/X is that it gives you complete control over character selection. Taking a general WYSIWG approach to things makes it easier to explain to modern players why their super-unique character with the long blah-de-blah backstory – at 0...