Year In Review 2021

So 2021 has been a year with a bunch of milestones in it.

I turned 40, got this very neat sketch to commemorate the occasion by the bard in my home campaign.

Shiny TTRPG links #48

Links for the last week of 2021! More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this - weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find even more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR.

5 More Stupid yet Robust Games for Video Calls on Coins and Scrolls

d4 Caltrops has a great d100 Random Rules & Rulings

A thousand gods by Odd Skull.

'Write Adventures to fit their Worlds': Setting specific adventure writing by Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet

Where the Chaos Thing Fell by From the Sorcerers Skull - demonic whalefall, a great planar site.

Bayeaux Tapestry meme generator - lots of potential here!

Whose Measure God Could Not Take gives us The Holiday One-Shot

OSR News Roundup for 12.20.21 - by Third Kingdom Games - everything that is not blogs in the scene.

Who's the New Guy Anyway? d20 Answers for OSR Games by Axian Spice - when you need to add another body to the party.

Knight at the Opera considers the Underdark in Subterranean Thoughts

Building a bubble around the table

This is a repeat of a piece I wrote in ~ 2007 for Irish gaming blog Direweasel, now lost to bit-rot. I am putting it up here as a good round up of what I look for in a game, regardless of system, whether I play or run it.

I think the best place to start is to lay out where I am coming from - what kind of games I have played, what worked and what did not. I should probably focus on my area of expertise which is that I am a low-system Planescape GM and an Illuminati University (IOU) GM.

I think IOU forms the epitome of 'my style' because it is at it's core adapted bullshit sessions. I'm going to take it apart a little to show you where it came from and how it has just run and run periodically since. The very first game was run over Christmas 2001, four of us were parked in someones apartment late and night and I can't remember how exactly it got started but it did - we pulled majors in Intergalactic Sexual Heroism, Kinetic Physics and Sorcery out of the ether and all of a sudden bizarre fraternities, sororities, dissertation topics, familiars, lab experiments and traditions just sprang into being over the course of the night.

And then on another night I dragged everyone together, fed them full of coffee and again a story evolved, with the minimum of prodding from me.

Review: The Kontext Spiel Collection

tl:dr; three light-weight free kriegspiel systems, a setting and lots of useful content generation tools in this compilation of tabletop goodness.

This is "a variety of resources for running freeform tabletop games" by Michael Raston of The Lizardman Diaries. Anyone who has tracked this blog for a while will have seen me plug Infinigrad and other pieces of genius scattered across the Lizardman Diaries blog. This book is a handy compilation with some of the best of those.

Bigger and slimmer than I expected - 56 pages of A4 in the soft cover I got off Lulu. The art is Michael Rastons trade mark out-of-copyright mashups. I respect the mans patience in searching up his source material and hacking it all together. A long time advocate of 'take your inspiration from an image', his works have always had a certain aesthetic that has tended towards the baroque in previous publications (A Blasphemous Roster being first to mind) but here I like how there is a clean seperation between the content and the tables making the crunch more accessible.

Shiny TTRPG links #47

As we thunder towards the end of the year - more links! More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this - weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find still more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR.

Continuing to point to the D&D Research Wizards Tabletop RPG 2021-2022 Survey which is still open. This years topics include: Covid-19's impact on TTRPGs, Education and TTRPGs, Online Play Behavior and Future Tech and TTRPGs. Some initial cuts of the data can be seen on their site.

An excellent "Maximalist Weird Fiction Nobleman Generator" from Grand Commodore.

Boot Hill and the Fear of Dice on highly dangerous systems by Chocolate Hammer.

Grumpy Wizard writes a good one in "What Is “The Game” of Dungeons & Dragons?"

Marcia’s Blog has Simulating Gygax's Stupid Economy

Some fun calculations from Wandering Gamist on ACKS Budget Dungeons: The Wages of Wizardry - how big a dungeon is your mad mage building on his budget?

Really cool set of D&D Flavor Generators by u/seriousd6

Some ultra-light mechanics ideas from Dare to DM

On Stronghold Clearing & Reclamation

tl:dr; pulling apart a theme of 'taking over unoccupied castles' and managing realms above a parties level.

Working through my old campaigns I realise a strong motif that crops up again and again is the players at a low level get given the keys to some giant old fortress with mysterious locked up depths, residents of dubious loyalty and rumoured treasures. So far "sounds like a dungeon" you might say and true to a point. The key difference I have found to it all is that from day one the players nominally own everything they are working through and so are a lot more invested in not just smashing their way in and looting what can be easily carried away - they spend a lot more time and effort cleaning out and rehabilitating 'their' fortress.

Kraken Mesa, as appearing in chart if Styx flow through Gehenna

Review: The Dungeon Dozen

tl:dr; 195 pages of d12 random tables to spice up any aspect of your fantasy RPG, stuffed with entertaining art and inspiration sparks.

I have been on a Lulu.com kick - the discounts show up in the OSR discord, how are you going to save money unless you buy some books? There are a fair few lists out there with recommended OSR fare to be had print-on-demand and The Dungeon Dozen - "Random Tables for Fantasy RPGs" by Jason Sholtis shows up on a lot of them near or at the top.

Fresh from Lulu, the Dungeon Dozen

So first impression is a funny one - I resisted purchasing this a while because I thought it was going to be a lot of ultra-crunchy tables adding more systems or other deeply esoteric bits of the rules. It is in fact a compilation of d12 tables from the Dungeon Dozen blog to randomly generate all sorts of fun and useful things. I probably should have done more research or at least trusted the buzz and picked this up an age ago. Given it came out in 2014, apologies, slow to the party.

Shiny TTRPG links #46

Shiny TTRPG links gathered from across the internets. More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this - weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find still more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR.

Continuing to point to the D&D Research Wizards Tabletop RPG 2021-2022 Survey which is still open. This years topics include: Covid-19's impact on TTRPGs, Education and TTRPGs, Online Play Behavior and Future Tech and TTRPGs. Some initial cuts of the data can be seen on their site.

Daily Adventure Prompts has 'High Tea and Higher Treason' - a fun set up for intrigue.

Weaver.skepti.ch on introducing a new generation to Fighting Fantasy

The latest series from A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry on Fortifications is great (3 parts so far).

Knight at the Opera writes A Thorough Look at Skill Challenges ranging across D&D editions and other RPG systems.

Building Bhakashal - Finding Holes in Plot Armor - a great discussion of game mechanics to deliver specific effects.

The Commoner's Stat Array, or 'That's not how averages work!' by u/EgoIsTheMindKiller.

Some nice thinking from Alchemist Nocturne on Why OSR - highlighting the adventure-generating engine that drives OSR games.

Actual Test: World, Climate and Globe Mapping Tools

tl;dr: testing online tools for generating world maps then simulating the climate.

I stumbled across a piece of paper, scribbled with notes that make up a hard-core world-building workflow I got from a guy at an Adventurers League in the before-times. I pass on the steps and hope this might bring joy to those among us who like super-crunchy world-building.

First step is to generate a random height map. For this we use the Planet Map Generator. There are a few sliders you can play with here but what you need for the next step is to generate a greyscale height map in Mercator projection. Adding a coastline contour will allow you to track the 'normal' coastline as you fiddle with water levels later.

Next you generate a map with "Make map" then right-click, save-as to get your grey-scale height map.

Review: Worlds Without Number

tl;dr: amazing world building tools packaged with a simplified D&D style system in a gorgeous chunky hardback.

I picked up Worlds Without Number after backing the kickstarter. The buzz across the OSR around the generation mechanisms in Stars Without Number convinced me that the fantasy equivalent would be right up my alley and I was not wrong in that assumption. Hugely impressed with the generators in this; I really liked how it is both 'create from scratch' and also 'embellish the skeleton you came up with yourself'. The two key blocks I see being useful to anyone whether they actually run WWN themselves are the adventure creation parts - as mentioned - and all the faction building pieces which can create friends, enemies and fronts in play in the world to drive further adventure!

Worlds Without Number, cover art by Jeff Brown

So what have we got in here? This is a giant tome with ~30% system, a setting (20%) and game mastering tools (50%) included. The book shows throughout the level of polish that I would associate with an extensively table-tested system - there are great 'teaching' pieces in here like the 2 page 'summary of character creation' that has an annotated character sheet laying out what everything is. Production quality is good, my copy turned up in good order and while I haven't put heavy use on it yet I'm happy with the feel of it.

Shiny TTRPG links #45

Shiny TTRPG links gathered from across the internets - a rich crop this week (because people had Thanksgiving to write?). More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this - weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find still more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR.

For your coffee and biscuit moment this week - D&D Research Wizards Tabletop RPG 2021-2022 Survey is up with an interesting prize pool for participants - asking some questions about how we might play differently in coming years among other interesting points. They have posted good breakdowns from past years surveys.

Dungeons & Possums writes Some Black Friday 2021 Sales - a good roster of things you may want to pick up across all available channels when next your gold burns a hole in your pocket.

Goblin Punch writes the magnificent The Obliterat and the House Unheard - read the comments for more gems.

Review of Ford's Faeries by Weaver.skepti.ch

The Fantasy Artwork & Inspirational Works of P Craig Russell For Your Old School Campaigns by Swords & Stitchery

Grumpy Wizard on How Do Stories Emerge from Game Play?

Lost Atlas posts their stats on "What kinds of maps are Dungeon Masters searching for?"

Data driven Appendix P: 3xd100 NPC party generation tables

tl;dr: NPC party generation tables to match what people are actually playing as PCs

Inspired by Appendix P of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide - for “Creating a Party on the Spur of the Moment” - as discussed by the Mystical Trash Heap just recently. This is a deep dive back to the question that started this blog in the first place - what if randomly encountered NPC parties reflected what players actually play, not what you can generate from the DMG.

So the following are some tables if you want to roll up a party of NPCs that reflect what you might expect to encounter, assuming a group of classed NPCs (reflecting the typical game table). If you want to roll up your own the following tables have 'Core' derived from D&D Beyond and 'Alternative' based on forum surveys. Typical table size is five.

On DMs and Players as two communities

Knight at the Opera wrote an interesting post on how DM's and Players appear to him to be two communities, purchasing different products and consuming different media. I think the point on consuming different media - and especially frequenting different online spaces - may have something to it. The rest of this assumes you have read Dwiz's article, so perhaps grab a coffee and a biscuit and take a moment there.

Enjoyed it? Good.