A hundred paces down the dark tunnel, you see dozens of goblins dancing round a fire and singing about eating anything that moves. At this point the crew begin to plot. Could we just stay here and shoot at the goblins? We should be able to get a load of arrows off in three rounds. If we run back to where we avoided …

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Every fantasy work has two characters: magic and the landscape. Landscape In Earthsea, the water compartmentalizes the locations. Here, Ged grew up. There, he learnt about magic. And every time we want to know more about this land, water provides punctuation to the story and isolates the area. Middle Earth has a very …

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Pre-Game Post a link to the pdf (but assume nobody will read it) Get snacks (or make dahl if you're feeling fancy - everyone loves dahl) Put water and glasses on the table Dice, rubbers (or 'erasers' in American), pencils, and coins Plan smoke-breaks (even if you don't have smokers) Intro Hide the beers until the …

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I feel like the Old School Renaissance ('OSR') games could achieve their goals easier. The exact goals vary, but it's something along the lines of: like old D&D don't fill the character sheet with 1,000 special skills simple rules lethal game-play, forcing players to be clever Rather than ditching feats and …

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My recent background-watching videos covered the Old School Renaissance ('OSR'), which looks to revive a lot of old-school D&D-style play. I started with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, so a renaissance intrigued me. Strange Premises While I've not heard of some of the more egregious rules returning (thieves …

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I've made an alternative World of Darkness system, where players enter Contests instead of Combat. Here are the highlights from a campaign. Setting In Belgrade (in Hungary), in the year 1130 AD, four people fell to the Cainite embrace in a church, and were forced to survive the political machinations of the existing …

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Radio dramas often have their characters speak so as to indicate their actions. Does anyone have an extra blanket? If I get cold I'll wake up with a bad back. Hearing this, we know The group is sleeping outside, the speaker is old, and the speaker wants to sleep. I wonder if the group adopting this habit might enhance …

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I've been testing out a new combat system for White Wolf games, such as Vampire: The Masquerade. The Old System White Wolf games opined about how the system was simple - roll a number of D10's equal to your Strength + Athletics (or whatever), and count all the dice which land on 6 or more. The player then reads the …

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Weighing into an ancient (or at least senile) fantasy debate, I'd like to go back a step. It usually goes like this: An elf punching a dragon to death because of monk-training isn't realistic. 1 You think dragons are "realistic"? No, but a certain semblance, in certain regards, to reality, which we might call …

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Tabletop RPGs have struggled with pronouns more than most places, because they speak through constant examples. The fighter rolls a '10' on Initiative, and the goblins roll and '8'. He goes first. A,D&D used the default 'he', throughout all examples, and in the second edition, printed a small box explaining that …

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