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.
Homicidally Inclined Persons Of No Fixed Address writes on Gygax’s Finches
I Cast Light! gives us OD&D: Opium, Dunsany & Dreamlands Part II
Castle Grief Collective has Mass Hex Appeal
False Machine thinks up a primeaval setting in WALLS OF ICE
Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours continues a magnificent Dungeon23 run with THE DREADWHALE UWL KINI-QIKANA
Adventures Buffo gives us Materialist Campaign Creation
Monsters and Manuals gives us WizardKnighting Planescape
Le Chaudron Chromatique creates Where Once Was The Sea...
Something Something Dice has A little idea called “wibble”
01 May 2023
29 April 2023
Blog Carnival: On creating elements for a setting
To participate in this months blog carnival - hosted by Codex Anathema on the topic of On creating elements for a setting I want to write on some of the tools I draw on to do this.
The first block are deterministic - me staring at what there is and building it out myself. The second block are the generators I use to twist the straight-line thinking of my own ideas and surprise my players.
Block One - Following the Obvious Leads
The first piece is generally the campaign theme - what is the premis of this game? Recent examples have been 'expedition into a lizard kingdom', 'outlaws set up shop in the ruins of an ancient empire', 'dragonblooded nobles delve into the secrets of their great house'. From that I generally get a few things that need to be explained or included from the get go.
If there is a general motif that can be identified, I try and collage in ideas around that. For the dragonblooded nobles, each noble house was of a certain draconic lineage - so how do they lean into that? How do they interact with the actual dragons still living around the place? What does this realm think of dragonslayers?
One of the guiding stars for me for worldbuilding is geography is destiny - even with magic in the world it holds. Looking at who is beside who, what is the terrain, where are the rivers, the connections, etc, these provide ideas for the setting. If the sea is nearby, what of the things that live in the oceans? If there are mountains, what of those that live on and under the mountains?
Often at this point a cultural analogue (or group of them) becomes apparent - and those can be a useful hook to fish for other ideas. I like to choose a 'substrate' and then log the differences - a campaign a while back was an imperial chinese setting which had Wang Liangs in the flower of their ascendancy - so how do very long lived rules who can speak to each other telepathically change the setting? When all the architecture is scaled up for them? Too large for horses, how do they prefer to get around?
Block Two - Introduce Randomness with Generators
The first block are deterministic - me staring at what there is and building it out myself. The second block are the generators I use to twist the straight-line thinking of my own ideas and surprise my players.
Block One - Following the Obvious Leads
The first piece is generally the campaign theme - what is the premis of this game? Recent examples have been 'expedition into a lizard kingdom', 'outlaws set up shop in the ruins of an ancient empire', 'dragonblooded nobles delve into the secrets of their great house'. From that I generally get a few things that need to be explained or included from the get go.
If there is a general motif that can be identified, I try and collage in ideas around that. For the dragonblooded nobles, each noble house was of a certain draconic lineage - so how do they lean into that? How do they interact with the actual dragons still living around the place? What does this realm think of dragonslayers?
One of the guiding stars for me for worldbuilding is geography is destiny - even with magic in the world it holds. Looking at who is beside who, what is the terrain, where are the rivers, the connections, etc, these provide ideas for the setting. If the sea is nearby, what of the things that live in the oceans? If there are mountains, what of those that live on and under the mountains?
Often at this point a cultural analogue (or group of them) becomes apparent - and those can be a useful hook to fish for other ideas. I like to choose a 'substrate' and then log the differences - a campaign a while back was an imperial chinese setting which had Wang Liangs in the flower of their ascendancy - so how do very long lived rules who can speak to each other telepathically change the setting? When all the architecture is scaled up for them? Too large for horses, how do they prefer to get around?
Block Two - Introduce Randomness with Generators
26 April 2023
d30 Archmage status flexes
Status seeking among archmages or what does the mage who has everything want?
This is rooted in a snip I recall from The Status Seekers about how once all material wants were met, a person sought status. Considering how a mage is effectively a post-scarcity entity in a world that is not there yet, they are competing for status with other mages.
Some things like political power, wealth, etc. can also be contested by lesser beings such as dragons, nobles and others that many archmages hold as beneath their notice. To gain status among other archmages, truly preposterous amounts must be gathered - a world ruled without challenge, every ounce of gold ever mined - scales no mere non-magician could hope to even consider.
Many of the things archmages pursue reflect the fact that only the opinions of their fellow archmages count, like the most esoteric of high art, often the uninitiatied will be unable to appreciate the glory of their achievements - but this is not for them, their opinions do not matter.
The below table of goals are also what its realm/lair/demiplane can be expected to be built around - the attainment and maintenance of whatever status display it has deemed worth while.
d30 status flexes of an archmage
1. Most dangerous beast collection - caged or free-roaming
2. Most ludicrous home - e.g. lava moats, bubbles on the Negative elemental plane, carried by a megalodon
3. Most ancient ruin inhabited - proportional to the dire reputation of the creators and the amount of their dangerous defenses left intact
4. Epic rituals - the more dangerous for the most frivolous gain the better
5. Most esoteric addiction - maintained through incredible effort to source supplies e.g. time travel to gather an extinct herb
6. Most unlikely political machination - holding some polity in place against significant destructive forces
7. Greatest realm sponsored - being known as a champion of a place and effectively accepting any and all challengers where/when they choose
8. Quantity of vassals - having nations, tribes, cults and organisations operating under your banner
9. Unlikeliness of servitors - getting everything done with really impractical servants - spring breezes, turtles, an order of blind monks
10. Stamp on the land / territory dominated - sheer scale of land indisputably dominated - nothing moves without their will
This is rooted in a snip I recall from The Status Seekers about how once all material wants were met, a person sought status. Considering how a mage is effectively a post-scarcity entity in a world that is not there yet, they are competing for status with other mages.
Some things like political power, wealth, etc. can also be contested by lesser beings such as dragons, nobles and others that many archmages hold as beneath their notice. To gain status among other archmages, truly preposterous amounts must be gathered - a world ruled without challenge, every ounce of gold ever mined - scales no mere non-magician could hope to even consider.
Many of the things archmages pursue reflect the fact that only the opinions of their fellow archmages count, like the most esoteric of high art, often the uninitiatied will be unable to appreciate the glory of their achievements - but this is not for them, their opinions do not matter.
The below table of goals are also what its realm/lair/demiplane can be expected to be built around - the attainment and maintenance of whatever status display it has deemed worth while.
d30 status flexes of an archmage
1. Most dangerous beast collection - caged or free-roaming
2. Most ludicrous home - e.g. lava moats, bubbles on the Negative elemental plane, carried by a megalodon
3. Most ancient ruin inhabited - proportional to the dire reputation of the creators and the amount of their dangerous defenses left intact
4. Epic rituals - the more dangerous for the most frivolous gain the better
5. Most esoteric addiction - maintained through incredible effort to source supplies e.g. time travel to gather an extinct herb
6. Most unlikely political machination - holding some polity in place against significant destructive forces
7. Greatest realm sponsored - being known as a champion of a place and effectively accepting any and all challengers where/when they choose
8. Quantity of vassals - having nations, tribes, cults and organisations operating under your banner
9. Unlikeliness of servitors - getting everything done with really impractical servants - spring breezes, turtles, an order of blind monks
10. Stamp on the land / territory dominated - sheer scale of land indisputably dominated - nothing moves without their will
23 April 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #117
Another week of deep delving the TTRPG hinterwebs. 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.
u/JacktheDM has a key insight into why *players* like 5e in The OSR, Lonely Fun, and why I believe many D&D alternatives entirely miss the point of why people will never leave 5th Edition
Rosalind Chapman suggests No one cares about anything that happened 1,000 years ago.
Tabletop Atelier proposes How Bingo Can Revolutionize Your D&D Game
Busy Wyvern gives us Slaying the Scheduling Dragon
Hack & Slash writes On the Creative Crocodile Conundrum
Grumpy Wizard asks What’s your “Appendix LP?”
Bruce Heard gives us Aerial Bombing
Dr. Jesse Olsen, University of Melbourne on Phys.org writes Why Dungeons and Dragons is good for the workplace
u/JacktheDM has a key insight into why *players* like 5e in The OSR, Lonely Fun, and why I believe many D&D alternatives entirely miss the point of why people will never leave 5th Edition
Rosalind Chapman suggests No one cares about anything that happened 1,000 years ago.
Tabletop Atelier proposes How Bingo Can Revolutionize Your D&D Game
Busy Wyvern gives us Slaying the Scheduling Dragon
Hack & Slash writes On the Creative Crocodile Conundrum
Grumpy Wizard asks What’s your “Appendix LP?”
Bruce Heard gives us Aerial Bombing
Dr. Jesse Olsen, University of Melbourne on Phys.org writes Why Dungeons and Dragons is good for the workplace
22 April 2023
My Own Personal OSR
To mark the 4th anniversary of spinning up this blog I thought I would talk about what the OSR means to me since this is maybe, kinda an OSR blog.
I'm picking this up on the back of the 'splinter in my mind' that was Yora's toot "I am one of the people who think OSR is a meaningless term and shouldn't be used." I find this odd because Spriggan's Den is an exemplar of the type of blog I would hope to see when I search on the term.
So why would I tag this an OSR blog? Because I know what I look for when I trawl across blogs and I find it on blogs that post under the OSR tag - and I want to do that too.
Ok - so what do I look for out there? I look for the community of practice of running a good game. OSR is useful to me in that it is a label that points to people who create old school tools - light, creative aids with a massive span of subject matter. On an OSR blog I'm likely to get a couple of spark lists and some weird mechanic to run jousting with ogres.
I may also find shelfies of original documents, yet another retroclone, screeds about how people are playing the game wrong - this is the rock matrix around my gold nugget, the dross that must be cleared away to get to the good stuff. That is fine, better to know that there is some gold in here if you look than have there be nothing at all.
This has been discussed by more erudite folk than I such as recently on Traverse Fantasy's piece on the OSR being different things to different people and their addendum with the key point "aren't you tired of being restrained by the same cyclical discourse about the OSR? Don't you just want to go ape-shit?" - similar to Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse point that "once you make a category like OSR, people will use it, outside your control."
In the past four years of blogging, I mostly write about four types of things:
- I trawl the net for data so that we can have some grounding to make some assertions about what has happened in the past, what is happening around us now
- I review things that appeal to my magpie sensibilities
- I document lessons I have learned in trying to run an enjoyable game at my table
- I try to create tools for fellow game-masters
I'm picking this up on the back of the 'splinter in my mind' that was Yora's toot "I am one of the people who think OSR is a meaningless term and shouldn't be used." I find this odd because Spriggan's Den is an exemplar of the type of blog I would hope to see when I search on the term.
So why would I tag this an OSR blog? Because I know what I look for when I trawl across blogs and I find it on blogs that post under the OSR tag - and I want to do that too.
Ok - so what do I look for out there? I look for the community of practice of running a good game. OSR is useful to me in that it is a label that points to people who create old school tools - light, creative aids with a massive span of subject matter. On an OSR blog I'm likely to get a couple of spark lists and some weird mechanic to run jousting with ogres.
I may also find shelfies of original documents, yet another retroclone, screeds about how people are playing the game wrong - this is the rock matrix around my gold nugget, the dross that must be cleared away to get to the good stuff. That is fine, better to know that there is some gold in here if you look than have there be nothing at all.
This has been discussed by more erudite folk than I such as recently on Traverse Fantasy's piece on the OSR being different things to different people and their addendum with the key point "aren't you tired of being restrained by the same cyclical discourse about the OSR? Don't you just want to go ape-shit?" - similar to Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse point that "once you make a category like OSR, people will use it, outside your control."
In the past four years of blogging, I mostly write about four types of things:
- I trawl the net for data so that we can have some grounding to make some assertions about what has happened in the past, what is happening around us now
- I review things that appeal to my magpie sensibilities
- I document lessons I have learned in trying to run an enjoyable game at my table
- I try to create tools for fellow game-masters
19 April 2023
Review: The Wilderness Alphabet
tl:dr; a useful set of wilderness spark tables, one of the gems of the OSR, system independent so useful for any edition or fantasy setting.
This one I picked up among a team of heroes back in early 2019, as part of a Lulu order together with the d30 Sandbox Companion and Yoon-Suin. It sits on most lists of Lulu recommendations and rightly so.
There is some public domain art, some GIMP'ed compositions for stranger things and overall it reflects the ~ 4e era OSR aesthetic of public domain air illustrated books. A nice, clean, easy to read zine.
This one I picked up among a team of heroes back in early 2019, as part of a Lulu order together with the d30 Sandbox Companion and Yoon-Suin. It sits on most lists of Lulu recommendations and rightly so.
Cover art by Viktor Vasnetsov
First and foremost this is a DM's tool - from the contents page being a d100 table to generate a random site through to the half dozen blank back pages for campaign notes. This is spark lists throughout, high level ideas to fire your imagination then the rest is up to you. As the author says in the intro, they were once a 'build everything' DM and as with any of us like that, would be caught out by players going where he did not expect. This book is the fruit of his own random tables to be ready for whatever the table threw at him.There is some public domain art, some GIMP'ed compositions for stranger things and overall it reflects the ~ 4e era OSR aesthetic of public domain air illustrated books. A nice, clean, easy to read zine.
17 April 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #116
Plenty of interesting links this week. 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.
Owen KC Stephens has a pair of massive megabundles to help cover medical bills: Owen's Medical Bills Bundle #1 and Owen's Medical Bills Bundle #2
Goblins in a Tank innovates D4k - Experimental Superpowered Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay
Goblin Punch shares THE UNDERCLOCK: Fixing the Random Encounter
Traverse Fantasy writes Interesting Procedural Generation
Was It Likely? lays out The Laws of It All: worldbuilding guidelines and principles
Revenant's Quill observes It's okay
Owen KC Stephens has a pair of massive megabundles to help cover medical bills: Owen's Medical Bills Bundle #1 and Owen's Medical Bills Bundle #2
Goblins in a Tank innovates D4k - Experimental Superpowered Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay
Goblin Punch shares THE UNDERCLOCK: Fixing the Random Encounter
Traverse Fantasy writes Interesting Procedural Generation
Was It Likely? lays out The Laws of It All: worldbuilding guidelines and principles
Revenant's Quill observes It's okay
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