Category: RPG

The thing about random tables – or “procedural generation” if you’re one of those midwits that thinks extra syllables makes you sound smarter than you really are – is that they are a shortcut method to operating the machinery of a game world in a way that makes you...

As this post goes live, the IP holders for D&D are doing their darndest to rip conventional play away from the hobby approach of “anything is possible at the table (as long as you adhere to story-arc driven narrative games)” and into a consumerist approach of “gatcha driven subscription...

Thanks in large part to the bros actively re-inventing and reshaping RPGs through experimentation, session reports, analysis, and (sometimes heated) discussion, the hobby has cycled back to the age old question of, “Who invented role playing games?” Other lesser factors contribute, of course. The upper midwest Boomer Crew is...

This is an RPG post.  I promise. For the last few years the family has slow-walked a low-key advance on the homestead front. This past month we added another notch on the victory post by throwing what probably should have been an investment in the hobby wargame channel into...

The implementation of vector-based spaceship combat in Traveller is easy.  It’s the strategy that results from the process that’s hard.  Like chess, the rules are simple, but lead to a wealth of complex puzzles and potential pitfalls for the unwary. Marc Miller gives Traveller (1977) players two options: Just...

Ten billion people can’t all be wrong. Tobor is no paradise planet, but it’s got something going for it that keeps people there and keeps them growing the population.  Sure, it’s got no surface water and only a trace atmosphere.  It also has the most effective government in the...

This video on the origins of tabletop RPGs made the rounds last week because Jason Tondro, in the white beard, took a few minutes to beat his breast and put on a hair shirt and self-flagellate that the hobby grew out of a normal guy scene in the late...

Well, that didn’t work. Cobalt-15 had to make his first jump with unrefined fuel, and it went about as well as one might expect.  Using refined fuel, you’ve got a 100% chance of making it home okay.  Using unrefined fuel you have an 11% chance of your drive malfunctioning...

Let’s talk about this odd planet in the northwest corner of the Penfold Sector. Blaine’s World is earth sized and has a water coverage of 50%.  It is chiefly characterized by a breathable atmosphere, but one classified by InfoGalactic as “corrosive” due to the frequent acidic rain-fronts that plague...

Note the date of this post. In our 1:1 time game of Traveller, the Free Trader known as the Blackraven sets forth on February 22nd.  With each jump taking roughly two weeks to complete, it won’t take long until we have to shift the camera back to that rascal,...