The RPG scene has suffered for too long under its assumption that every positive feature in a system (realism, choices, fancy-looking hats) must imply more work to understand the system, and more time to resolve every action.

   (easy but nonsensical)                (realistic but Maths) …

A,D&D gave monsters random treasures like this:

People who want to work with others on an RPG naturally tend towards Google docs. It seems so easy. They send the link out, people make edit suggestions, and you click 'approve' or 'deny'. Everyone's generating spells, and spelling corrections at 100 kph, and it all looks great.

Git, meanwhile, looks like a …

A good RPG session works a little like a dinner party, and the best of both have food. So why don't rule-books come with recipes?

This module pairs well with doritos and twiglets, and a side of Monster energy drink.

Of course, the RPG community, that socially malformed mass of cretins who couldn't wipe their own snot …

The classic World of Darkness system has some impressive features.

System Summary

1. Add the character's Attribute + Ability,
2. And roll that number of D10's.
3. Each die which meets the difficulty number (default: 6) means one 'success'.

Bust in the Door!

• Strength 3 + Crafts 3 = 6
• Roll 6D10 (difficulty 7): 7, 4, 4, 3, 1, …

The One Page Dungeon contest asks people for a single-page dungeon with a Creative Commons, share-alike, attribution licence.

"Huzzah", I thought, "that's GPL compatible!", I imagined, wrongly.

The first caveat is 'GPLv3', which is still fine for what I do, but a shame.

The next caveat is 'only CC …

Sometimes the party needs to make a decision as a group. Most of the time, in fact.

• The strange man beckons you to follow him
• The goblins spot you, and instantly retreat back into a hole in the hillside

You know the drill.

And sometimes, people perfectly capable of deciding what they want to do, will not make …

I think it's fair to say that Adobe's InDesign is the standard publishing tool for RPGs, or at least the most common among the most well-known RPGs. However, it's clearly inappropriate for BIND.

BIND's all about working together on an open project, but InDesign is geared to limit that openness.

Cash

In order to use …

Parallel actions speed up resolution in a way nothing else ever could.

5 Players vs 10 Bandits

Look at how the table acts, focussing for a disturbing moment on the players, rather than characters.

Standard One-at-a-Time Initiative

The GM calls for initiative:

1. Alice, Bob, Charlie, Drake, and Emily roll Initiative.
   • The …