First of all, do we need a new OSR? No, of course not. There's no shortage of people still creating, playing, or just discussing D&D-style games, with oceans of interesting material available. Also, I'm not going to quibble over the definition of the OSR, or whether it's "alive" or "dead". A lot of photons have … Continue reading The New OSR: The case for the Cepheus Engine
This isn’t a pop-culture blog. I don’t do movie reviews, and I’m not going to start now. However, I just got back from a screening of Everything Everywhere All at Once, the new movie by Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, and I wanted to discuss it a bit, at least in RPG terms. I don’t … Continue reading Everything Everywhere All at Once: Initial thoughts on making it a game
There have been a number of RPGs that have held the official Star Trek license over the years: Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures (the current rights holder), the 1990s Last Unicorn Games series of books (one game for each TV series), the 1980s Star Trek RPG from FASA, and even the long-forgotten 1978 Heritage Models game … Continue reading These are the Unofficial Voyages…Non-licensed Star Trek RPGs.
In 1956, the English writer Colin Wilson released the book The Outsider. It was sort a cultural and literary analysis of so-called "outsider" figures, and served as an early introduction to existentialism. The book received a lot of early acclaim from critics, and Wilson was as feted one of the "angry young men" of his … Continue reading Planet of the Spiders: A campaign idea I’ll probably never get around to.
I’ve finished up my conversion of the OSR zine Lumberlands (DriveThruRPG / itch.io), the fun lumberjack fantasy setting, to the Black Hack ruleset.. I've assembled everything into two zine-sized (5.5" x 8.5") PDFs that can be downloaded and printed. Remember that you'll need a copy of both the Black Hack and the Lumberlands zine to … Continue reading Lumberlands: A Black Hack conversion in two PDF booklets
At Travellercon/USA 2021 I got to play in a great session of Traveller: 1700. This is a free setting for Classic Traveller created by Greg Caires, originally published in the Freelance Traveller fanzine. It's available for download over at the Freelance Traveller site. Though designed for Classic Traveller, it's easily compatible with more modern versions, and … Continue reading Traveller: 1700 – A custom character sheet and some recommended Colonial American RPG books
OK - It's not either of those things. But I make a lot of character sheets, and have occasionally been asked about my process. This isn't in any sense a complete guide, just some notes and ideas I've had while designing sheets that some might find useful. This is generally intended to create print PDFs, … Continue reading The universally complete and infallibly correct guide to creating your own custom RPG character sheet.
Like a lot of people, I've been gradually moving towards more rules-light #ttrpg systems over the years. My last few one shots were using things like Cairn, Knave, and the Cepheus Engine. However, I just ran Modiphius' Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of (which ain't rules-light at all), and I'm starting to reconsider this … Continue reading Conan RPG: Changing my mind about crunch
I've never been a huge megadungeon guy. Spending an entire campaign just clearing rooms and collecting treasure wasn't something I was particularly interested in. (No judgement on people who enjoy it) But the itch.io Megadungeon Jam has got me reconsidering the megadungeon, and how I might run one. It's a one-year jam to encourage people … Continue reading Denizens: Some initial thoughts on a Megadungeon
I've always been fascinated with Michael Brown's Cepheus Engine setting Omega 99. It's heavily based on the old ITV show Space 1999. Honestly, I didn't think the original TV show was particularly good, but the fun 1970s style of it, and Brown's very interesting gameable take on the source material continue to intrigue me. Here's … Continue reading Further Thoughts on Omega 99
Polyhedral Nonsense 