Personable Thoughts

  I have recently been reading Fabula Ultima (more thoughts on that in a future post), and one thing that struck me is how often the rules text emphasises to not deviate from the rules-as-written unless everybody consents. This feels like a departure from the tabletop culture of allowing the GM to override the rules whenever it suits the game, or come up with their own house rules and expect the table to accept them. However, after further deliberation, it appears to me that this can be because the rules are a safety tool. Many people with more experience and knowledge and me have written about safety tools, so I will not go into deep detail here (see e.g. the TTRPG Safety Toolkit ), but one thing that seems generally true is that they only really work when everybody engages with them in good faith. They will not stop a problem player, who can easily ignore them, abuse them, or just generally cause an uncomfortable situation. What they are good for, is preventing those who want to eng

  The classic fantasy orc comes with an amount of unfortunate racist baggage, but for many they also form a core part of the type of fantasy world they like playing in. I have attempted to write an origin story for orcs that can hopefully avoid some of the bad history, while also maintaining them as a people known for martial prowess and having a certain in-world reputation. It certainly has parallels with Tolkien's orcs, but imagined after the fall of Sauron. I hope I have been successful in creating something interesting and with less unfortunate implications, but I am of course imperfect, so who knows? Long ago when the Dark Lord and his cadre of sorcerers were plotting their wars, they needed an army. Lacking a willing population to serve as their fighting force, they would steal people away and subject them to their vile experiments, intending to mold them into powerful but servile soldiers. Using dark magic and darker alchemy, they corrupted their captives' bodies and min

  A "problem" that I imagine affects many of us is that it is much easier to find the time to read, than to play. Fortunately reading is still an enjoyable pastime. In this (intended) series, I write up my impressions from a read-through of the book, with all the caveats that come with that. The first entry in this series is Josh McCrowell 's highly anticipated Big Book RPG His Majesty The Worm . Hopefully soon available again. At first glance, the game looks like OSR fare: desperate adventurers venturing into the megadungeon in search of fame and fortune. That is, until you look closer at the mechanics, which are different from any OSR game I have ever seen. Coming in with some familiarity with RPGs, The Worm reveals itself to be a different beast entirely, as if someone attempted to reconstruct the OSR dungeon experience from first principles using only the fiction, while rejecting the mechanical baggage of D&D. I was not surprised to hear Brad Kerr of Between Two C

  Many a swashbuckling adventure contains a fencing duel or ten: our hero facing off against one or more opponents, their swords clattering as the fight takes them around the scenery in a way that is very difficult to emulate with a succession of attack (or damage) rolls. Where are the feints? where are the clever reversals? Instead, I present here a duelling mechanic (or perhaps rather a minigame?) using a deck of playing cards to emulate the back and forth of a classic fencing duel for two combatants: First, unless the game has a clearly defined attacker, both players draw a card to determine who starts on the offence and who starts on the defence . Highest card is offence . The duel is played out over a number of rounds, in the beginning of each round, cards are drawn, then cards are played, continuing until one combatant is defeated. In the first round, the players each draw a hand of five cards. In later rounds, they will draw two new cards for their hand, to replenish those play

  So, in the grand tradition of RPG thinkers who came before me, I have decided to start a blog. As a relative newcomer to the scene, I am probably not the most knowledgeable, nor the most insightful writer on the web, but I do hope that my thoughts are at least interesting. If nothing else, this blog will serve as an archive of some of the thoughts I have, that would otherwise be lost (maybe they ought to be, who knows?). I will refrain from giving myself some overwritten mission statement, which will invariably be forgotten anyway, but I do have a few overall thoughts on the kind of things I will probably be writing about: Little gameplay ideas, or setting elements that may or may not make it into future games or supplements I write Blogs on blogs: sometimes I will read someone else's blog post and have thoughts on it, if I think they are sufficiently interesting, I will write them here "Reviews": many words have been said by almost as many people as to what is necessar