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Context  A couple nights ago, I watched a video by PaladinProse ( link here ) about Black Lodge Games (BLG) and what it means to "be a man" online. In the video, Mr. Prose highlights how BLG made a supplement for Shadowdark about a brothel (that doesn't shy away from being misogynistic), despite Kelsey being openly lesbian. It got me thinking about when you create a supplement or adventure for someone else's system. Is the act of creating the adventure an act of standing with the original author's stated beliefs or is it a case of replacing the author's stated beliefs with your own?  From PaladinProse Surprise! It's Nuanced and a Moral Grey Area! This is something I don't hear much about because there is nuance and edge cases and two games can have a completely different answer. For small, brand new indie games, when someone releases a supplement it is a message that the author of the supplement is part of the indie game's community and therefore h...

As part of Prismatic Wasteland's  Appendicitis N blogwagon , I got to thinking about my appendix N and how one implementation worked really really well. So here's a few pointers on how I try to bring in an inspiration.  1. Define how important the media is to the tone and vibe of the game.  When you create your campaign, having some inspirational media can really help. When you add a piece of media to your touchstones, how important is it? Do you want to have it only be a small part of the vibe or is it a big part of the game? One touchstone I used for a campaign was Vampire Survivors, an action roguelike bullet hell. I didn't want to simulate the themes, I wanted to emulate the tone of progression where each advancement adds a new dimension to your gameplay. Sure, the numbers could become massive but instead they change how damage is delivered. This is done by adding more projectiles, allowing some weapons to pass through enemies or even add elemental effects. That's w...

Recently I have been enjoying rogue-likes and rogue-lites like Nubby's Number Factory, Dungeon Clawer and Enter the Gungeon. These games are randomly generated so that each run is different from the next. They also have permadeath. Once your little creature dies, you have to start from the beginning in a new maze. There are many disagreements on what a rogue-like is, almost as many disagreements as the question "What is the OSR?".   My white whale campaign is a rogue-lite campaign. I thought it would be easy as Rogue, the first rogue-like, the start of the genre, was inspired by the high fantasy setting of dungeons and dragons. Unfortunately I have done nothing but get closer and closer not quite getting close enough. Traditional games like 5e or Pathfinder want the GM to make balanced combats which doesn't find the randomized nature of rogue-likes so they won't do. OSR games are my best bet as they have dungeon-centric gameplay and due to the simpler character co...

For the longest time, I ran 1.5 hour campaigns. I would run them for my local youth club. There were rules set by the organizers that helped mold my prep. First, I had an 1.5 hour time slot total. That includes set-up, cleaning up after wards and gaming, so my sessions happened fast. Secondly, I only have around 4-5 sessions. I did largely oneshots for the first 2 years and the last one I did an actual campaign. My prep was guided by these rules and still help me today. Here is my prep process for that last 4 session campaign.  First off, rule system. 5e isn't big in my area. Gamestop ceased all operations in Ireland and they had the most tabletop stuff (dice and 5e mainly). I ended up creating a rough 2d6 system loosely based off of Kal Arath. At this point I would assemble all the random tables and spark tables I need. Secondly, I would prep the starting 3 missions. I like sandboxes and I found them easy to run as my players were part of a community. I prepped the mission by gett...

Events   Players  Necro  Selune Volkhv  Ante  Wolf  Garmadon   The party enters with Selune just about dodging a falling column trap.  They find a group of werewolves that converse to the party with a high reaction roll.  The wolves give Ante the gift of lycanthropy thanks to Ante winning a duel and Wolf pledges to aid them.  The party then finds a group of religious order of warriors hunting werewolves. The party hates them.  Selune sneaks past and grabs the relic from Wind that Whispers, the leader of the werewolves.  The rest of the party try to take out the leader of the holy order. The party abuse the fairy dust set on tracking werewolves and throw it in the leader’s eyes, stunning them.   From Fromsoftware Wolf successfully douses an amulet from the werewolves in the blood of his enemies gaining werewolf abilities.  The party enters combat, Necro scares half of the warriors with a spell and there are 4 warriors ...

 So my Lands of legend campaign is ending soon, one more session. They got the artifacts and are almost ready to fight Olwin, The Cunning. The game is going great everyone is happy, everything has a nice bit of closure and one of my players asked, "what's next?". This question send shivers down my spine. Truth is, I have no idea about ending a campaign in a good way and starting something new. A lot of times campaigns fizzle, bang or poof but this has not. The campaign can't be extended as myself and my players are going to be a lot more busy. I asked my players and some want to do a New Game+ of sorts, same world different angle. Some (like myself) are wanting to play a campaign under a different GM. Some are busy and will be the end of rolling dice, for the next while at least. A lot of folks talk about how to start a campaign or great campaign starters but never great campaign climaxes. There are hundreds of resources for GMing the first session, but not the last. ...

Introduction I have played many systems, from narrative focused games to more simulationist games. Over time my tastes have changed from wanting the rules nearly out the picture to wanting the rules to be the focus of the game. Nowadays it leans somewhere in between. Here is a list of all the games I have played and what I learnt from them.  The Games Dungeons and Dragons 5e: advantage is a great mechanic for simply adding to a roll with little tracking.  Pathfinder: It's very hard to make a one-trick pony so every character has at least a dozen toys. Shadowdark: The perfect amount of character abilities (at least from the get-go) is 2. From The Arcane Library's website GURPS: I love how the numbers are done in the beginning meaning once character generation is done, you just need to look at your sheet.  Dungeon Crawl Classics: I love level 0 as it answers the only question a backstory should have and that's why are you here. Troika: Give your players weird and cool toys ...