Shiny TTRPG links #250

Shiny links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Chaoclypse’s Substack writes BEAR WITNESS!

Traverse Fantasy gives us General Update (Icon0clasm and more!)

TRAIPSE shares The 10 types of special rooms

Alchemist Nocturne gives us Guns in fantasy

mrmagusjester shares D&D Rules Cyclopedia, the best-ever edition

Sage's Sanctum gives us Handling Factions in a Hexcrawl

Play Material writes Varieties of Scenes in TTRPGs

Afraid of Encounters gives us Gamemasters are Game Designers!

Observations of the Fox shares Crossovers between Seasons

Nordic Larp writes Accepting Limits: The One-Hour Online Role-Play Experience

Dice Goblin gives us Sub-Hex Design: Seven Anchors of Wilderness Play

Review: A Home Reforged

tl:dr; a game of dwarves delving the dark to restablish outposts; tight old-school style with some nice mechanical twists.

Where did this come from? Zinequest 2024. I had it on my shelf but recently managed to get bits to table thus a review.

Art by Michail Papanchuk

Nice little book, focuses on a theme and while first impression might be 'oh, dwarves, have we not done this' - this is actually a neat compilation of all the things you would need for a dwarven delving campaign that are often scattered across lots of books and need legwork from the DM. Here we have everything you need in a single package.

The book itself is a fat zine or a small book - 92 pages - with about ~ 1/4 of the book made up of 'ready made scenarios' that make this ready to go out of the box. I am more of a fan of the 'adventure that showcases the system' as time goes on and these are good examples of that.

Actual Play - Hexcrawl25 - The Swooping Lizard Affair

Inspired by a discussion elsewhere I ran session #20 of my hexcrawl recently and it provided a nice illustration of pure map based play over an in-game day and a bit. Written up to follow Jenx first best practice: "Record your hobby experience" while continuing the DM commentary addition to the session notes.

The short version; with a few days to kill until the party needs to pick up something and eager to test out a magical item that was alleged to make their draught-lizard faster, they set out to hike back up to a landmark they had seen. They sensibly navigate around hazards then spot something interesting, "Squirrel!" off the plan and end up wrestling with a wild-magic surged flying reptile mount in a session heavily driven by the wild-magic surge table.

Characters

Herb - Firbolg "Alchemist" (artificer)
Eggie - Goliath "Wizard" (wild-magic sorcerer)
Cortez - Dwarven Fighter

Plus minions
Clarabelle - tabaxi, small, servant
Fabricator Technician #207 - insectfolk, small, observer
Cedric - big lizard beast of burden

Session Recap

Shiny TTRPG links #249

Shiny links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Swan and Raven Studio hosts the last days of the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid.

Of Dice and Dragons launches this months RPG Blog Carnival with Feasts and Festivals in Your TTRPG Campaign

Of Dice and Dragons also shares Wanted: Hosts for the 2026 RPG Blog Carnival!

LootLootLore gives us Diagetic Bingo

Congas.blog writes Finding my community

Chronicled Scribblings of the Itinerant Overlord gives us AD&D Training Costs: A Common DM Unforced Error

Sage's Sanctum shares A Calamitous Random Encounter Alternative

Old Men Running The World asks What Makes Me Want To Run A Game?

Grumpy Wizard shares Five Lessons About the TTRPG Business From Mike Mearls

Fluorite Guillotine gives us minimalist jam post-mortem

Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes Strangers in a Strange Land

forestsofcernutis gives us Proto-D&D

Bruce Heard shares D&D Castles: Operating Costs

Crow’s Corner gives us Halloween One-Shots: Read, Played, Reviewed

Review: Beyond Dread Portals

tl:dr; self-contained RPG of world-hopping fantasy, old-school system, great, concise setting.

My 'support your local gaming houses' campaign - this is from d101 games in the UK; I saw this pop up as a kickstarter, pitching a "tabletop roleplaying game of multidimensional world-travelling fantasy" which speaks to my plane-hopping interests and the pitch also noted that the "easy-to-learn rules are built from a core loosely based on the world's first fantasy roleplaying game, tailored to fit the setting" so I was interested in something that was setting-forward, with less focus on classes and sub-classes, more on the portal-hopping.

Cover art by Jon Hodgson

First impression was of a nice self contained book, fatter than I was expecting at ~320 A5 pages and with a nice ribbon. Within we have clean lay-out, no columns, black-and-white art by Dan Barker, Jeshields and Paul Tomes. The vibe is very much a cleaned-up old-school book, self-contained with everything needed in here.


So what is all this stuff you get in the book?

Core Gameplay Loop for Sector Defense Game

Pondering on how to run "Your Sector, Your Problem" - "SHIELD or Stargate Command but you are responsible for a sector of inhabited alien worlds" - it lurks in my mind like a splinter.

Questions I have been having are 'what exactly is the fun here', 'why is this not a board game',and then 'what is the minimum viable game to get going'. I have written about this before in 'DIO - Cosmic Defense Brigade' and d20 Sector Defense Assets - the high concept is that you are responsible for holding down a sector your corporation has newly acquired protectorship of and have a scarce amount of assets of varying levels of effectiveness and you have to deal with all the problems that come across your desk with those.

Looking at the first of the questions - 'what exactly is the fun here?' - the core gameplay loop I have in mind is:
- "spot the problems" - gather info, figure out what is going on across your sector
- deploy your resources - typically not enough for easy answers
- resolve incidents
- recover/maintain your resources

Shiny TTRPG links #248

Fresh links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Swan and Raven Studio hosts the last days of the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid.

DirectSun Games hosts the Puzzle Dungeon Jam

Sam Sorensen launched Mothership Month 2025 Wargame: OVER/UNDER which is where all the noise about that has come from.

Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us Alignment Languages are Socially Repulsive

Fight in the Shade shares Minimal D&D Stats

Crow’s Corner writes A Taste of Tabletop Roleplaying Games about Vampires

New School Revolution proposes Let's Make a Forest

Viridian Void Productions writes In Praise of Idle Prep

Play Material gives us The Ancient Game of Riddles

Rise Up Comus shares A Camping Procedure

Leicester's Ramble gives us Yet Another Mass Combat Hack - Using "Field Combat Rules for Shadowdark" in OSE

Improved Initiative writes Dungeon Design Tips: You Need To Make Social Skills Viable If You Want Players To Use Them

four letters at random gives us One-shot Good Society: Changes

The Robgoblin wonders Why adventure? Ask the CIA!