Links from wanderings about the web. More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this is weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find even more links on the newly-automated weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.
Trilemma Adventures delves into play-styles by setting A Taxonomy of Roleplaying Utterances v0.1 then using it to classify an old-school session in Further RPG Transcript Analysis: Old School and compare that to Critical Role RPG Transcript Analysis: Critical Role and pull out the game-play loops from both using what behaviours follow which others.
From the Sorcerer's Skull shares The Gygaxian D&D Implied Setting Recipe
Indre Auge Blinks asks What is high-trust trad adventure design?
Elfmaids & Octopi racks up the tension with Doomtracks
Rise Up Comus on how wizards are always at fault in Two mistakes
The Grisly Eye gives us Cities in Cities
The Dododecahedron gives us Refereeing Forgery
30 January 2023
28 January 2023
How Much Would We Spend On A VTT?
After the hoax '$30/month for the new D&D' screenshots went around I dug around to see if we have any indication of what the market might bear as a price point and I think it is ~$10/month.
Apparently the screenshots below are a hoax cooked up by someone long before the OGL fiasco but they did start an interesting conversation - people were outraged at $30/month but at the same time there was recognition that a bells-and-whistles VTT would have a cost and people would in theory be willing to pay for something they perceive as value. So what could people be convinced to pay?
I'm going to take the current DnDBeyond and Roll20 price points as a starter - $2.99 for basic DNDBeyond, $5.99 for all the bells and whistles, $4.17 monthly for Roll20 basic, $8.33 for everything. Imagining that the OneD&D VTT does provides a virtual tabletop like Roll20 and holds all your charactersheets, rulebooks etc. like DnDBeyond and charges you a combo price for it we can start by smushing both those services together and say basic would be ~$7, deluxe would be ~$14. Certainly those could be rounded down but we're trying to get a sense of how much could be pried from the hands of our fellow gamers on a monthly basis so we shall lean high.
Apparently the screenshots below are a hoax cooked up by someone long before the OGL fiasco but they did start an interesting conversation - people were outraged at $30/month but at the same time there was recognition that a bells-and-whistles VTT would have a cost and people would in theory be willing to pay for something they perceive as value. So what could people be convinced to pay?
I'm going to take the current DnDBeyond and Roll20 price points as a starter - $2.99 for basic DNDBeyond, $5.99 for all the bells and whistles, $4.17 monthly for Roll20 basic, $8.33 for everything. Imagining that the OneD&D VTT does provides a virtual tabletop like Roll20 and holds all your charactersheets, rulebooks etc. like DnDBeyond and charges you a combo price for it we can start by smushing both those services together and say basic would be ~$7, deluxe would be ~$14. Certainly those could be rounded down but we're trying to get a sense of how much could be pried from the hands of our fellow gamers on a monthly basis so we shall lean high.
25 January 2023
State of the Blog (post #401)
Have kind of tread close to this recently with the end of year but hey, 400 is a milestone.
Overall its been a decent year - views punched up from ~3000 a month to ~4400 a month which is a good bump. There was definitely a solid chunk of Russian bots and cyberwar scouts in there but apart from hollow numbers they did no damage here. Oddly comments have dropped off (but it felt like they bumped up recently). Twitter followers has plateaued - got up to 608 or so and stabilised about there which is pretty much flat from 100 posts ago. I have spun up on Mastodon as a back up should the bluebird go away.
I was originally going to replicate the template of the 300th blog post with stats and so on but you've seen all those recently on the end of year post so lets not waste your time. I think a more interesting question is what is this place for?
Overall its been a decent year - views punched up from ~3000 a month to ~4400 a month which is a good bump. There was definitely a solid chunk of Russian bots and cyberwar scouts in there but apart from hollow numbers they did no damage here. Oddly comments have dropped off (but it felt like they bumped up recently). Twitter followers has plateaued - got up to 608 or so and stabilised about there which is pretty much flat from 100 posts ago. I have spun up on Mastodon as a back up should the bluebird go away.
I was originally going to replicate the template of the 300th blog post with stats and so on but you've seen all those recently on the end of year post so lets not waste your time. I think a more interesting question is what is this place for?
23 January 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #104
More links I found interesting from the past week or from archive dives. 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 or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.
In the light of recent events, let us recall A Knight at the Opera wrote Oh God There Are So Many RPGs (A Guide)
prokopetz proposes Inadvisable tabletop RPG premise #137
Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet shares Downtime Activity: Worshipping a God
Goblin Punch gives us Puzzle Do's and Dont's + Some Examples
Frog Factory starts the year with Three d100 Battlemap Generators
On Dungeon-building we have:
From Kuroth's Quill with #Dungeon23 Resources - Mega-Dungeon Tools of the Trade
Aaron The Pedantic holds forth on Dungeon Space: Introduction & Torches
Plastic Polyhedra On #dungeon23 and losing myself in old school dungeon stocking tables
The Dododecahedron with 100 Dungeon Entrances
Goobernuts' Blog gives us Giant Tree Dungeon – #dungeon23
Wondering Monsters? shares #Dungeon23 Bloodlands Hexcrawl Location 1
For our Dwarf corner for this week, fittingly we go digging in the archives:
Goblin Punch has Some Words on Dwarven Gender
A Blasted, Cratered Land gives us Facts About Dwarves
The Oblidisideryptch writes Dwarves Dwarfs Dwarii
Nuclear Haruspex on Dwarves and Orichalcum
Dapper Dungeons saw Dwarves of living Stone
Cyborgs and Sorcerers wrote Races Re-Imagined: Dwarves
In the light of recent events, let us recall A Knight at the Opera wrote Oh God There Are So Many RPGs (A Guide)
prokopetz proposes Inadvisable tabletop RPG premise #137
Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet shares Downtime Activity: Worshipping a God
Goblin Punch gives us Puzzle Do's and Dont's + Some Examples
Frog Factory starts the year with Three d100 Battlemap Generators
On Dungeon-building we have:
From Kuroth's Quill with #Dungeon23 Resources - Mega-Dungeon Tools of the Trade
Aaron The Pedantic holds forth on Dungeon Space: Introduction & Torches
Plastic Polyhedra On #dungeon23 and losing myself in old school dungeon stocking tables
The Dododecahedron with 100 Dungeon Entrances
Goobernuts' Blog gives us Giant Tree Dungeon – #dungeon23
Wondering Monsters? shares #Dungeon23 Bloodlands Hexcrawl Location 1
For our Dwarf corner for this week, fittingly we go digging in the archives:
Goblin Punch has Some Words on Dwarven Gender
A Blasted, Cratered Land gives us Facts About Dwarves
The Oblidisideryptch writes Dwarves Dwarfs Dwarii
Nuclear Haruspex on Dwarves and Orichalcum
Dapper Dungeons saw Dwarves of living Stone
Cyborgs and Sorcerers wrote Races Re-Imagined: Dwarves
21 January 2023
Actual Test: Brancalonia Brawling
From the Brancalonia book there is an alternative, non-lethal Brawling combat system and it suits the lower-stakes Southern Reaches game I am spinning up. I wanted to do a quick test to make sure I understood it and I record it here in the hopes it is useful to some.
This is effectively a parallel combat structure for 5e characters; based on your level you have a number of Brawl Features starting with a General Move and a Class Brawl feature at level 1. You get a number of moves per brawl linked to level, starting at two and rising to four by level six.
Any turn you can inflict a beating with your attack action to make an attack roll and deal a whack.
Damage is in 'whacks' with everyone able to sustain six before going down; each non-critical hit deals one whack, each whack lowers your AC by 1 so things can start going sideways quickly once you get on the wrong side of things. A crit deals two whacks. Foes will typically have 2-4 whacks for a mook, 6 for a heavy.
You can grab props, both common (bottles, pots, stools) and epic (barrels, tables, other characters), and use them to boost the number of whacks you inflict, stun opponents, increase your AC or other effects.
Moves are things like, react to an attack to impose disadvantage on the foe (Counterattack for fighters), tripping (general move), attack multiple foes (clothesline, general move) and so on.
The entire brawl is assumed to occur within a bar, alley or other tight quarters and so movement is essentially disregarded - as long as you can move at all, you can get to where you want within the brawl.
This is effectively a parallel combat structure for 5e characters; based on your level you have a number of Brawl Features starting with a General Move and a Class Brawl feature at level 1. You get a number of moves per brawl linked to level, starting at two and rising to four by level six.
Any turn you can inflict a beating with your attack action to make an attack roll and deal a whack.
Damage is in 'whacks' with everyone able to sustain six before going down; each non-critical hit deals one whack, each whack lowers your AC by 1 so things can start going sideways quickly once you get on the wrong side of things. A crit deals two whacks. Foes will typically have 2-4 whacks for a mook, 6 for a heavy.
You can grab props, both common (bottles, pots, stools) and epic (barrels, tables, other characters), and use them to boost the number of whacks you inflict, stun opponents, increase your AC or other effects.
Moves are things like, react to an attack to impose disadvantage on the foe (Counterattack for fighters), tripping (general move), attack multiple foes (clothesline, general move) and so on.
The entire brawl is assumed to occur within a bar, alley or other tight quarters and so movement is essentially disregarded - as long as you can move at all, you can get to where you want within the brawl.
18 January 2023
Returning to teenage new-joiners
Listening to some of the chatter around the OGL fuss and attempted tea-leaf readings about what could be the thinking behind it, one theory I heard was that WotC is attempting to move back to an era where they were getting people into the game much younger. The big vision apparently is to sweep people up in a Fortnite-like model with a million micro-transactions for fancy hats and other stuff - selling many small things to everyone around a digital tabletop instead of the current model of selling chunkier books to the DM's alone (more or less) - which seems to align with the "$30/month" DnDBeyond leak. Or as another friend of the blog pointed out - do the Games Workshop model of get people in as a teen, sell them an army or two for a few hundred euro then let them age out and replace them. So does this seem feasible?
Dan Muñoz (@Nat1Fun) ran a poll on twitter asking "How old were you when you first played a TTRPG?" and got 3000+ responses that showed over half of them joined before they were 18.
Comparing this to some other polls over the past few years and it looks broadly in line - people are joining before their mid-20's, and mostly pre-adulthood, so let us say that this is no fluke result.
Dan Muñoz (@Nat1Fun) ran a poll on twitter asking "How old were you when you first played a TTRPG?" and got 3000+ responses that showed over half of them joined before they were 18.
Comparing this to some other polls over the past few years and it looks broadly in line - people are joining before their mid-20's, and mostly pre-adulthood, so let us say that this is no fluke result.
16 January 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #103
Filtering out most of the OGL relating content, this is a palate-cleanser selection and reminder of the kind of content we want to see encouraged. 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 or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.
Hill Cantons returns with News from the Hill Cantons, Both Real and Fictional
From Kuroth's Quill ponders Why Greyhawk in 2023? - grodog's Thoughts
I backed Monsters and Manuals Yoon-Suin 2nd Edition Kickstarter Pre-Launch
Wizard Thief Fighter writes Roleplay Is Folk Art
@annethegnome tweets A thread on pretty mushrooms
Some archiving diving:
False Machine collected Visual Artists of the OSR
Methods & Madness said Ask what YOU can do for the OSR!
Rolltop Indigo shared The Big List of RPG Plots
Spriggan's Den archive dive - My favorite articles on Gamemastering
Plastic Polyhedra gives us Beef! A simple session zero tool
Age of Dusk On No Artpunk II
Of Dice and Dragons is open for sign up to the RPG Blog Carnival!
How to Succeed in RPGs or Die Trying shares How to Keep Players Returning for a Thousand Hours
Hill Cantons returns with News from the Hill Cantons, Both Real and Fictional
From Kuroth's Quill ponders Why Greyhawk in 2023? - grodog's Thoughts
I backed Monsters and Manuals Yoon-Suin 2nd Edition Kickstarter Pre-Launch
Wizard Thief Fighter writes Roleplay Is Folk Art
@annethegnome tweets A thread on pretty mushrooms
Some archiving diving:
False Machine collected Visual Artists of the OSR
Methods & Madness said Ask what YOU can do for the OSR!
Rolltop Indigo shared The Big List of RPG Plots
Spriggan's Den archive dive - My favorite articles on Gamemastering
Plastic Polyhedra gives us Beef! A simple session zero tool
Age of Dusk On No Artpunk II
Of Dice and Dragons is open for sign up to the RPG Blog Carnival!
How to Succeed in RPGs or Die Trying shares How to Keep Players Returning for a Thousand Hours
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