A vision came to me of a perfectly tactical RPG system, and then I realized it was worthless, because tactical RPGs are tacky. This perfectly tactical system could be memorized in minutes, and let you play without any board or counters. Skilled players would do well, unskilled players would do badly. Players would …

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Linear dungeons, where players see room 1, then room 2, all in order, can feel constraining. Dungeon: any location in an RPG scenario with details of opportunity and danger. Jaquaysing: to make a dungeon non-linear, so players must select which paths their characters take. The 'how' falls directly out of the in-world …

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Standard Initiative rules are the devil. Your basic combat action is an Attack roll. If you roll Damage at the same time as the attack, then adding another roll for Initiative means every combat takes twice as long. If you just spent 20 minutes on a combat scene that would have been 15 seconds of screen-time in a film, …

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My third BIND campaign ended in glorious disaster and nonsense which forced me to reforge magic. Lax Theory I had a magic system with a bit of metamagic 'bend', where people could do basic spells (fwoosh, fire!) then add a little metamagic to boost literally any spell (fwshhHHH FIREBALL!). No more 'control person', …

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I recommend these RPG RSS feeds. If you don't use RSS, check my setup overview . Blue Mountain has a post on saving Ravenloft modules (which is brave, and laudable). Cthnonic Studios has a thoughtful section on RPG design theory, and another on reviews . DriveThruRPG has a feed so full of new RPGs that nobody can …

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My RPG games follow a format which avoids railroading, without any need for elaborate settings or difficult NPC relations. I call it 'story weaving', because it lets me stretch the metaphor. Railroads are Inevitable For all the complaints about railroading, computer games suffer from railroads far more than RPG …

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Here is a silver piece, old woman. Now tell me my fortune! What will I see on the road? An ogre awaits you on the road. Keep your eyes open, and your bow strung! No need! We planned to take the South road to town, but we can switch to the West instead, and avoid the ogre entirely. Foolish man! The ogre lies in your …

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A friend was thinking about running a Call of Cthulhu campaign, where demonic hair-extensions burrow into people's brains to control them. I've never run Call of Cthulhu, but I had a few ideas for things which might happen in the background, and some friends added a few ideas. So here are the bullet-points I sent him: …

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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) …

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It's hard to read a full adventure module - you keep having to go back and check you've remembered all the important points. And no matter how much you read, you always need the module open at the table, so that you can check it again. Even when you haven't forgotten anything, you still repeatedly check the book in …

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