TTRPGs

What Systems Do

Mar 21, 2022 · 10 min read · Theory

Systems can be boiled down to input, process, and output. ┌────────────────────┐ ┌───────────────────┐ ┌────────────────────┐ │ Monster: AC 17 │ ──> │ │ <── │ Player: Attack +3 │ └────────────────────┘ │ process │ └────────────────────┘ ┌────────────────────┐ │ │ ┌─────────────────────┐ │ Player: Long sword │ ──> │ │ …

If You Want to Understand an RPG System, Remove the Dice

Mar 5, 2022 · 6 min read · Theory Design

Reading over systems with all of those 'Add this, roll that' can give someone the appearance of a massive RPG engine, churning out all sorts of details and replicating various interesting minutiae of the gaming world. But sometimes what's really happening is pointless plastic tapping noises, and once the plastic's …

Random Character Generation

Mar 1, 2022 · 3 min read · Theory

Random character generation is great, especially random Attributes. Why you hate random Attributes People think Random attributes will ruin your game because D&D has taught them that Attributes cannot be raised quickly. If one rolls a bad character, they'll have to play 'Jake, the pointless', forever after. This …

The Open Source RPG Dream

Jan 30, 2022 · 9 min read · Theory BIND FOSS

The cynics say that we keep reinventing the wheel. They say we have too many RPGs, mostly doing the same thing, and why bother to write yet another RPG about elves and magic swords? And they have one thing right - we should stop re-writing RPGs from scratch. Instead, we should change them. Knave started as a …

BIND

Jan 20, 2022 · 1 min read · BIND

BIND is a grunge-fantasy tabletop RPG designed to solve a number of problems: Problem: Character backstories are a pain. Solution: Story Points Problem: Players never engage in the adventure in the right way; when they should go left, they always go right, but railroading them never gives good results. Solution: …

Return to White Plume Mountain

Jan 12, 2022 · 8 min read · Reviews

This was one of the greatest adventure modules out there. I played it so many times that I once used it as a Mind Palace in university, because I can remember every single room. White Plume Mountain The original adventure took the adventurers around a 'house of fun' style dungeon, with a ham-fisted hook, and no kind of …

Rune Quest is Awful

Jan 10, 2022 · 2 min read · Reviews

RuneQuest's Glorantha setting is 500 pages long, so it's about half the length of Lord of the Rings. In order to help with character creation, players can get a 'Player pack' pdf, which tells you that the book as written was too confusing for normal players to build a character. The character creation begins with your …

Trouble at Grogg's

Nov 20, 2021 · 2 min read · Reviews

Trouble at Grogs is one of the best adventures I ever ran, and I've run it many times, in multiple systems. It looks like any other adventure at first. The players find a roaring tavern owned by a half-ogre named 'Grog'. Grog asks them to find out who's been stealing things in town. Reading more, you (the GM) find out …

Don't Have a Fun Game

Jan 20, 2021 · 4 min read · Theory Utilitarianism

I so often hear people giving the golden rule of RPG's as 'remember it's a game, and to just have fun'. I can see that if nobody likes the game then it's not a good game, but the 'have fun' advice, while common enough, doesn't help anyone to do anything. John Mill discussed the paradox of happiness. If you want to …