A fine haul of links from about the interweb. For more, see the previous list found here or on the restored weekly blogroll on r/OSR or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Blogstones shares Thoughts on Folk Gaming
Necrotic Gnome gives us Dolmenwood Online Rules Reference
Merry Mushmen shares Black Sword Hack SRD
Mediums and Messages writes Schematic Dungeons from Everyday Objects
Behind the Helm gives us Trope, Flaw, Skill: 3-Layered NPCs
Explorers Design shares Why Combat Is a Fail State
Vaults of Zin gives us GM's Glossary Part 3: Everything you can do with Movement
Weird & Wonderful Worlds writes Existential Evolution (Weird & Wonderful Ecology Generator)
Roll to Doubt gives us Proposals for Player Conduct
AMONG CATS AND BOOKS shares Sandbox Settlements: Prep, Run, and Thrive
17 March 2025
15 March 2025
Grow your own DMs - Above-the-table social aspects
A while back we ran a DM clinic - for a more experienced DM to coach newer ones - I wrote up much of the 'on table' prep and tricks of the trade side of things before but the conversation also ranged around the 'above table' social aspects of the hobby as a whole. As per Gorgon Bones first best practice: "Record your hobby experience" this is a pretty solid reflection of the active questions of 'working DMs' within a pretty busy gaming group.
There was a lot of table management questions but some themes
- player engagement (dealing with stuns and deaths)
- DMs having fun (and not having to do the not fun bits)
- telling people what they are signing up for (content disclaimers)
- avoiding anti-social characters when you do not know the other players well
There was a lot of table management questions but some themes
- player engagement (dealing with stuns and deaths)
- DMs having fun (and not having to do the not fun bits)
- telling people what they are signing up for (content disclaimers)
- avoiding anti-social characters when you do not know the other players well
12 March 2025
Campaign Retrospective: Spelljammer Academy III: Starlight Arcana
Since a mini-campaign actually finished, let us do a retrospective Against the Wicked City style particularly since I pulled the plug on this one earlier than I thought I might.
Spelljammer Academy: Starlight Arcana, 8 Sessions (Sep-Dec 2024)
What it was:
An open table follow-on to my Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign. It was supposed to be run spelljammer-esque 3rd party content at the regular friday open tables
A vehicle to play through kick-started planar content - Path of the Planebreaker, Starlight Arcana, 5e Planescape and Planestriders Journal for LevelUp5e all came through the door around the time this was running.
The first of these open table runs I feel I fumbled.
What worked:
Pretty combat heavy stuff compared to what I usually did since this was more orthodox D&D; bad guys just drawing down and going straight to combat, straight-up murderous goblins as opposed to the ones that talk I usually run.
Adapting a big written adventure into episodic chunks worked better than I might have thought.
Retrofitting the campaign to Realmspace worked well; I dropped the ground location into the Dales, stuck some of the others on Coliar and then used Karpri in Realmspace for the ocean world
Pre-gen characters - I abandoned building characters with people who came without one - instead of having the table sit around while I worked with one person, I gave them a half dozen pre-gens to choose from and got things rolling.
What didn't:
It took too damn long to get the party onboarded with the continuing quest at the start of sessions. I tried having NPCs ask for help, tell them what was going on, etc - it all seemed to take too long while I watch the lights of interest gutter in their eyes.
Trying to maintain progress with different crews over multiple open tables - often the player who knew what was going on was playing a character who was just useless as a conduit of information from one session to the next - leaning too hard into their characters incapabilities through low intelligence or drunkeness. Characterful but sapped momentum.
(NPC) cast of thousands - even though practically it was three NPCs - but they were two different groups the Spelljammer Academy and the Starlight Arcana NPCs and it made the whole thing drag
Did not vibe with as many of the players that settled in as regulars compared to other campaigns. Not to say individuals were bad or did anything wrong but the table vibe was just not one that energised me.
Spelljammer does not work as a welcome wagon game - it is a 'twist' too far for beginning D&D folk and I was still often getting first-timers at the open tables.
Lessons learned:
For episodic one-shots, get things rolling quickly to a place where players are making decisions.
You can trust players to self-start where the setting is relatively vanilla but drop folk into a new or unusual setting and they will stall poking at the scenary to get a grip on where they are. Brancalonia is a relatively familiar setting, the uniqueness is the vibe and the non-lethal mechanics; Starlight Arcana/Spelljammer with the sky-sailing ships and the planar-influences plot was harder for people to grasp.
People far too often bring 'quirky' characters who are severely compromised as functional heroes - either unmotivated, unintelligent, unable to communicate, not actually an adventurer, etc. Getting them to do actual heroing was friction that needed to be overcome at the start of sessions.
Spelljammer Academy: Starlight Arcana, 8 Sessions (Sep-Dec 2024)
What it was:
An open table follow-on to my Spelljammer Academy mini-campaign. It was supposed to be run spelljammer-esque 3rd party content at the regular friday open tables
A vehicle to play through kick-started planar content - Path of the Planebreaker, Starlight Arcana, 5e Planescape and Planestriders Journal for LevelUp5e all came through the door around the time this was running.
The first of these open table runs I feel I fumbled.
What worked:
Pretty combat heavy stuff compared to what I usually did since this was more orthodox D&D; bad guys just drawing down and going straight to combat, straight-up murderous goblins as opposed to the ones that talk I usually run.
Adapting a big written adventure into episodic chunks worked better than I might have thought.
Retrofitting the campaign to Realmspace worked well; I dropped the ground location into the Dales, stuck some of the others on Coliar and then used Karpri in Realmspace for the ocean world
Pre-gen characters - I abandoned building characters with people who came without one - instead of having the table sit around while I worked with one person, I gave them a half dozen pre-gens to choose from and got things rolling.
What didn't:
It took too damn long to get the party onboarded with the continuing quest at the start of sessions. I tried having NPCs ask for help, tell them what was going on, etc - it all seemed to take too long while I watch the lights of interest gutter in their eyes.
Trying to maintain progress with different crews over multiple open tables - often the player who knew what was going on was playing a character who was just useless as a conduit of information from one session to the next - leaning too hard into their characters incapabilities through low intelligence or drunkeness. Characterful but sapped momentum.
(NPC) cast of thousands - even though practically it was three NPCs - but they were two different groups the Spelljammer Academy and the Starlight Arcana NPCs and it made the whole thing drag
Did not vibe with as many of the players that settled in as regulars compared to other campaigns. Not to say individuals were bad or did anything wrong but the table vibe was just not one that energised me.
Spelljammer does not work as a welcome wagon game - it is a 'twist' too far for beginning D&D folk and I was still often getting first-timers at the open tables.
Lessons learned:
For episodic one-shots, get things rolling quickly to a place where players are making decisions.
You can trust players to self-start where the setting is relatively vanilla but drop folk into a new or unusual setting and they will stall poking at the scenary to get a grip on where they are. Brancalonia is a relatively familiar setting, the uniqueness is the vibe and the non-lethal mechanics; Starlight Arcana/Spelljammer with the sky-sailing ships and the planar-influences plot was harder for people to grasp.
People far too often bring 'quirky' characters who are severely compromised as functional heroes - either unmotivated, unintelligent, unable to communicate, not actually an adventurer, etc. Getting them to do actual heroing was friction that needed to be overcome at the start of sessions.
10 March 2025
Shiny TTRPG links #215
Lots of links for our shared enlightenment. For more, see the previous list found here or on the restored weekly blogroll on r/OSR or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
All Dead Generations gives us Fear in a Handful of Dust
Alex Schroeder shares Dungeons and Wilderness and Politics
Grumpy Wizard asks What is the Essential Experience of Dungeons & Dragons?
Play Material writes The best fantasy world-building game I've ever played just dropped
Roll to Doubt asks Why Blogging?
Ward Against Evil gives us Treat Illusions As You Would Any Other Lie: No Rolls
Der PigDog's PigBlog shares Questing
All Dead Generations gives us Fear in a Handful of Dust
Alex Schroeder shares Dungeons and Wilderness and Politics
Grumpy Wizard asks What is the Essential Experience of Dungeons & Dragons?
Play Material writes The best fantasy world-building game I've ever played just dropped
Roll to Doubt asks Why Blogging?
Ward Against Evil gives us Treat Illusions As You Would Any Other Lie: No Rolls
Der PigDog's PigBlog shares Questing
08 March 2025
Review: Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire
tl:dr; all you need for evocative, self-contained Klingon adventures using the 2d20 system
I have long, long thought to myself what a fantastic show it would be to track the crew of a Klingon ship taking on the kinds of problems that crop up in the Star Trek universe - I was not aware that this book had been created when I saw it on a shelf in my FLGS so I grabbed it up gleefully.
Setting wise, this was a slam dunk, I'm a 'Next Generation' kid, Picard is my captain, and we got some great Klingon episodes from that and DS9 - I knew enough going in that I was coming to this with 'tell me how to run the setting' not looking for much on the setting itself.
First impression of the look and feel, it is a chunky book, good cover, nice colour-scheme through-out, two ribbons which makes it feel really ritzy. Inside front cover is a Klingon language map of the Empire, inside the back cover is a map with readable names and a zoom out to include the Romulans and Federation. Reading through it a bit more and it is pretty good - I have some quibbles with how things are ogranised, I had some confused flipping about trying to figure some stuff out, but pretty darn good for all the stuff packed in here.
I managed to even get this to table as part of my 'forever DM support group' and it was a good time even with it being my first time running the system and the first time many of them were encountering the setting and system.
I have long, long thought to myself what a fantastic show it would be to track the crew of a Klingon ship taking on the kinds of problems that crop up in the Star Trek universe - I was not aware that this book had been created when I saw it on a shelf in my FLGS so I grabbed it up gleefully.
descriptor, artist
The 2d20 system was one I had heard of - seen that it had Conan, Star Trek, John Carter and a few other well known settings released - but I had not read into it or figured it out. Another member of my local game group raves about 2d20 Star Trek so I figued there was something to it. The 2d20 system takes a little getting used to with its to-and-fro trading of the threat/momentum meta-currency but it is a good vehicle for facilitating games that strongly resemble Star Trek episodes.Setting wise, this was a slam dunk, I'm a 'Next Generation' kid, Picard is my captain, and we got some great Klingon episodes from that and DS9 - I knew enough going in that I was coming to this with 'tell me how to run the setting' not looking for much on the setting itself.
First impression of the look and feel, it is a chunky book, good cover, nice colour-scheme through-out, two ribbons which makes it feel really ritzy. Inside front cover is a Klingon language map of the Empire, inside the back cover is a map with readable names and a zoom out to include the Romulans and Federation. Reading through it a bit more and it is pretty good - I have some quibbles with how things are ogranised, I had some confused flipping about trying to figure some stuff out, but pretty darn good for all the stuff packed in here.
I managed to even get this to table as part of my 'forever DM support group' and it was a good time even with it being my first time running the system and the first time many of them were encountering the setting and system.
05 March 2025
Hexcrawl25 - Hex-filling by wandering around
I launched a short-run (six session) hex-crawl campaign to test-drive some old-school play styles and in parallel #hexcrawl25 crested the horizon - one stone, two birds!
With a session 0.5 and a first proper session under our belts ~ 8 hours play at table - the crew has poked about and found a couple of locations so I thought I would dump those up here.
Locations visited in session one:
The picturesque village of Ashley - mostly humans, all buttoned up by nightfall
The sky-burial grounds, sticking up from the forests. Has a tiny keepers cottage, who also has been found to keep the shrine of She Who Hides From Sight
The farm fields of Ashley
The great climb up to the Uruk high land
The panorama rock, claimed as territory by a cross naga
The standing stone (one large and eight smaller) where a message was left
The old lady of the swamps cottage - herb hung and filled with jarred things. Recently hosted the goblin market in the cave beneath
Dark pools - opaque waters, sticky mud and hard going generally. Used by the tree-whisperers as an ambush site for sacrificial victims
Lily ponds - pools with decent fishing, covered by giant lilies, home to territorial giant otters
The sacrificial rock - with burnt remnants of a tabernacle about it. Trees carved with strange symbols are found nearby
Locations seen
Fungal forest - seen but avoided so far
Dragonborn hamlet
Golian hamlet
Cult lair
Ruined tower
For session two they rounded up some henchlings for help and went back to the cult lair, spending the session dungeon diving.
In the interim between these campaign sessions I ran a pair of stand alone open tables - one doing the Waking of Willoughby Hall and the other doing Winters Daughter, both of which I located on the map. The party doing 'Winters Daughter' murdered some locals and chucked them off a cliff en route to their goal, significantly disturbing the local status quo for the campaign party when they restarted.
Session three they did another big wander - setting off on the journey documented in 'crawling with no notes' - wandering up to one settlement, interacting with the locals and bunking there then treking back down to investigate a missing person then turning around and trekking back again to another settlement and bunking there for the night. This was our most significant to-ing and fro-ing session so far - of course it happened when I did not have my notes in hand.
Locations visited in session three:
tall reed beds where they found a snakefolk patrol
deep marsh pools with a big crocodile
a mosquito filled wetland was one
boggy hills full of territorial but non-dangerous small lizards
ruins being excavated by snakefolk
dragonfolk hamlet in a vale with a shrine to a small god
snakefolk village in the exposed part of insectfolk ruins
barren tor that was found to be part of those same buried ruins but further away
Session four they delved into the depths of a giant ruin beneath that settlement; classic dungeoneering.
So far, half the sessions are spent actively 'hex crawling' exploring new parts of the map - we shall see how / if this pattern holds.
It has served its purpose of getting me way ahead of my #hexcrawl25 tempo with 105 hexes sketched in 61 days. Way ahead but still with the players champing at my heels.
With a session 0.5 and a first proper session under our belts ~ 8 hours play at table - the crew has poked about and found a couple of locations so I thought I would dump those up here.
Locations visited in session one:
The picturesque village of Ashley - mostly humans, all buttoned up by nightfall
The sky-burial grounds, sticking up from the forests. Has a tiny keepers cottage, who also has been found to keep the shrine of She Who Hides From Sight
The farm fields of Ashley
The great climb up to the Uruk high land
The panorama rock, claimed as territory by a cross naga
The standing stone (one large and eight smaller) where a message was left
The old lady of the swamps cottage - herb hung and filled with jarred things. Recently hosted the goblin market in the cave beneath
Dark pools - opaque waters, sticky mud and hard going generally. Used by the tree-whisperers as an ambush site for sacrificial victims
Lily ponds - pools with decent fishing, covered by giant lilies, home to territorial giant otters
The sacrificial rock - with burnt remnants of a tabernacle about it. Trees carved with strange symbols are found nearby
Locations seen
Fungal forest - seen but avoided so far
Dragonborn hamlet
Golian hamlet
Cult lair
Ruined tower
For session two they rounded up some henchlings for help and went back to the cult lair, spending the session dungeon diving.
In the interim between these campaign sessions I ran a pair of stand alone open tables - one doing the Waking of Willoughby Hall and the other doing Winters Daughter, both of which I located on the map. The party doing 'Winters Daughter' murdered some locals and chucked them off a cliff en route to their goal, significantly disturbing the local status quo for the campaign party when they restarted.
Session three they did another big wander - setting off on the journey documented in 'crawling with no notes' - wandering up to one settlement, interacting with the locals and bunking there then treking back down to investigate a missing person then turning around and trekking back again to another settlement and bunking there for the night. This was our most significant to-ing and fro-ing session so far - of course it happened when I did not have my notes in hand.
Locations visited in session three:
tall reed beds where they found a snakefolk patrol
deep marsh pools with a big crocodile
a mosquito filled wetland was one
boggy hills full of territorial but non-dangerous small lizards
ruins being excavated by snakefolk
dragonfolk hamlet in a vale with a shrine to a small god
snakefolk village in the exposed part of insectfolk ruins
barren tor that was found to be part of those same buried ruins but further away
Session four they delved into the depths of a giant ruin beneath that settlement; classic dungeoneering.
So far, half the sessions are spent actively 'hex crawling' exploring new parts of the map - we shall see how / if this pattern holds.
It has served its purpose of getting me way ahead of my #hexcrawl25 tempo with 105 hexes sketched in 61 days. Way ahead but still with the players champing at my heels.
03 March 2025
Shiny TTRPG links #214
A smorgasbord of chunky links this week. For more, see the previous list found here or on the restored weekly blogroll on r/OSR or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Attronarch's Athenaeum gives us Fight On! issue 16 now available
Illusory Sensorium launches the March RPG Blog Carnival with Over the Garden Wall
New School Revolution gives us Pointcrawls & Emergent Play
Sersa Victory gives us Cyclic Dungeon Generation
All Dead Generations gives us AN INTRODUCTION TO DUNGEON CRAWLING
Ten Foot Polemic gives us Another Underclock
Beneath Foreign Planets gives us PREDATORY ENCOUNTERS - IMPROVING THE RANDOM ENCOUNTER
Explorers Design asks How do we design a gaming community?
Prismatic Weekly launches a blogging bandwagon with Blogging Rabbit Hole
Mythic Mountain Musings asks What is Folk Tabletop?
Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes On Settlements
An Abominable Fancy gives us Campaign Preambles
Methods & Madness shares Yam-Shaped Campaigns
Attronarch's Athenaeum gives us Fight On! issue 16 now available
Illusory Sensorium launches the March RPG Blog Carnival with Over the Garden Wall
New School Revolution gives us Pointcrawls & Emergent Play
Sersa Victory gives us Cyclic Dungeon Generation
All Dead Generations gives us AN INTRODUCTION TO DUNGEON CRAWLING
Ten Foot Polemic gives us Another Underclock
Beneath Foreign Planets gives us PREDATORY ENCOUNTERS - IMPROVING THE RANDOM ENCOUNTER
Explorers Design asks How do we design a gaming community?
Prismatic Weekly launches a blogging bandwagon with Blogging Rabbit Hole
Mythic Mountain Musings asks What is Folk Tabletop?
Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes On Settlements
An Abominable Fancy gives us Campaign Preambles
Methods & Madness shares Yam-Shaped Campaigns
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