I have been hammering away at the City '26 challenge; running it faster and shallower than originally envisaged I would imagine. I have about ~37% of the wards done with ~16% of the year gone so am comfortably ahead of schedule. Concept is "a hiveworld from 40k as seen in the original Rogue Trader '87" including elements such as the Knight Worlds with their dinosaur herding, more abhumans, more Imperial Robots and a general stronger alignment to the aesthetic in Rogue Trader '87.
I find I have chipped away at lots of the more fascinating wards and blown off much of the initial spurt of inspiration but that has laid down lots of solid foundations and crystallised the core character of the place. 52 wards is *a lot* for a city; with just the ones done so far there is ample good gameable content. I am quite satisfied with the choice to make it a 40k hivecity because it is turning into a suitably complex behemoth.
As I have been filling out the various places I have ended up with one place where there is scarcity - ground level exterior access. Quite a few of the various wards should sensibly have external access - waste dumps, promethium vat fields, stock yards, maglev access, etc. Blocking those in has rapidly created a picture of the surroundings in a neat emergent manner.
We end up with the city surrounded by a number of military grounds - marshalling yards for the planetary guard regiments and the training fields for the Knight-candidates with their cyborged-carnotaurs. Stockyards for dinosaurs and bone heaps from their processing also need room. It became apparent that the hivecity was once a port but that the seas have long receded necessitating a 'ship-rail' to haul ships in over the saltmires.
One thing this has made me realise is that this means certain regions should have 'associated with' adventure hooks out in the linked spaces beyond the hive - be that a trip down into the dinosaur pens, riding out with the coldone cavalry on a wasteland patrol, stopping a raid on a ship being hauled up on the ship-rail, intercepting smugglers coming in on the maglev or some other thematically appropriate out-of-hive escapade. These could be very different to the 'in ward' encounters which may be dominated by just the groups that have presence there.
28 February 2026
25 February 2026
Wrapping a campaign on time
With an upcoming campaign end in sight, I am looking at how to wrap things up for my Hexcrawl25 campaign. The fact that it is still going into 2026 is a nice fillip but with a small householder on the way, better to tie things off than have it hanging over me.
I had a rummage around for wisdom on the web and DungeonFruit has some good ideas - but in a 'you should have started way back there' too-late-now sense. Dungeonfruit talks about "setting up your end condition" in Beginning Of The End (How To Finish A Campaign). Alas I am going almost perfectly against their advice and going with a real-world time limit - there is not an ticking clock hanging over the campaign, it was always about the party chasing after their own goals; a pure sandbox.
Beginning the wrap up
This means we are looking to align the end of campaign with players accomplishing their goals, not any particular big plot of mine. I told them the time they had left two sessions back and to think what they wanted to get achieved in that time. This is throwing the responsibility to manage their time on the players, which is fully in line with how the campaign has been running so far - they set the tempo, they go where they like, I run the world they are poking about in.
Throughout the campaign we have periodically been using the Ultimate RPG Campfire Card Deck and that has revealed or crystallised quite a few player chosen goals. I have catalogued them as they had come up - some have resolved, others are beyond the scope of the campaign but still some remain that could be achieved. Thus in the absence of an over-arching plot I will aim to let the PC's threads come to a resolution.
Personal quests folk had picked (and succeeded)
- found the Kingdom of Ashley, rescue and install the 'king' (collective)
- get a giant spider mount (the dwarf warrior)
- become reknowned (the 'wizard')
- create their own herbarium (the 'herbalist')
Open plots at time of trying to set up the finale
- meet their destined true love, as foreseen by a seer they met in a deep mine (the tundra barbarian)
- finish clearing out the local cult lair (collective)
Plan to the end
At this point this means that I am going to budget my time as getting one big quest done per session - maybe we will achieve more but going by prior rate of questing, probably not. So with a session filled by them finishing out the dungeon delve/cult clearance they are currently embarked upon that leaves three for resolving the 'destined true love' hook - which should be fine. The in-house testing team helped me figure out how to time it all, I know what elements I need to have to hand, the rest just runs off the hexmap.
Note, in between writing the first draft of this and now completing it, the party continued to clear out the cult lair they had been camped at - and are now easily a half session remaining before they are done and have taken some fairly heavy blows along the way. I am going to have to adjust my timeline from here - there may be a rest period, or reluctance to get stuck into further heroics? We shall see.
I think what I need to do is to set up multiple smaller elements - resolvable within a half session or so - and then keep/drop some as the time runs down, so the final session can be a reasonable declaration of victory, wherever they get to. Assuming they do not TPK along the way, which remains a possibility.
The one big thing I am taking from Dungeonfruit is to leave time for 'wrap up' and/or epilogue - I will give each of the players some running room to say how things turn out in the aftermath of all their deed - but I need to remember to leave that time and bring things to a close a little early on that last night.
I had a rummage around for wisdom on the web and DungeonFruit has some good ideas - but in a 'you should have started way back there' too-late-now sense. Dungeonfruit talks about "setting up your end condition" in Beginning Of The End (How To Finish A Campaign). Alas I am going almost perfectly against their advice and going with a real-world time limit - there is not an ticking clock hanging over the campaign, it was always about the party chasing after their own goals; a pure sandbox.
Beginning the wrap up
This means we are looking to align the end of campaign with players accomplishing their goals, not any particular big plot of mine. I told them the time they had left two sessions back and to think what they wanted to get achieved in that time. This is throwing the responsibility to manage their time on the players, which is fully in line with how the campaign has been running so far - they set the tempo, they go where they like, I run the world they are poking about in.
Throughout the campaign we have periodically been using the Ultimate RPG Campfire Card Deck and that has revealed or crystallised quite a few player chosen goals. I have catalogued them as they had come up - some have resolved, others are beyond the scope of the campaign but still some remain that could be achieved. Thus in the absence of an over-arching plot I will aim to let the PC's threads come to a resolution.
Personal quests folk had picked (and succeeded)
- found the Kingdom of Ashley, rescue and install the 'king' (collective)
- get a giant spider mount (the dwarf warrior)
- become reknowned (the 'wizard')
- create their own herbarium (the 'herbalist')
Open plots at time of trying to set up the finale
- meet their destined true love, as foreseen by a seer they met in a deep mine (the tundra barbarian)
- finish clearing out the local cult lair (collective)
Plan to the end
At this point this means that I am going to budget my time as getting one big quest done per session - maybe we will achieve more but going by prior rate of questing, probably not. So with a session filled by them finishing out the dungeon delve/cult clearance they are currently embarked upon that leaves three for resolving the 'destined true love' hook - which should be fine. The in-house testing team helped me figure out how to time it all, I know what elements I need to have to hand, the rest just runs off the hexmap.
Note, in between writing the first draft of this and now completing it, the party continued to clear out the cult lair they had been camped at - and are now easily a half session remaining before they are done and have taken some fairly heavy blows along the way. I am going to have to adjust my timeline from here - there may be a rest period, or reluctance to get stuck into further heroics? We shall see.
I think what I need to do is to set up multiple smaller elements - resolvable within a half session or so - and then keep/drop some as the time runs down, so the final session can be a reasonable declaration of victory, wherever they get to. Assuming they do not TPK along the way, which remains a possibility.
The one big thing I am taking from Dungeonfruit is to leave time for 'wrap up' and/or epilogue - I will give each of the players some running room to say how things turn out in the aftermath of all their deed - but I need to remember to leave that time and bring things to a close a little early on that last night.
23 February 2026
Shiny TTRPG links #265
Further links from about the interwebs! For more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Bloggie-nominated. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.
Joe B. writes dungeon ecology makes no sense
To Distant Lands gives us ...Or, They Live Here
Was It Likely? shares how jo games are
Arrowed is Gaming gives us How I Daggerheart
a garden from the libraries writes Aragorn’s tax policy and other weird shibboleths
Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us The Player-Drawn Dungeon Map is a Fast Travel Hack
The Katt Kirsch Blogsperience shares Running it Back: The Case for Replaying Modules
Magnolia Keep gives us An Objective Draw Steel Vs. Daggerheart Review
Joe B. writes dungeon ecology makes no sense
To Distant Lands gives us ...Or, They Live Here
Was It Likely? shares how jo games are
Arrowed is Gaming gives us How I Daggerheart
a garden from the libraries writes Aragorn’s tax policy and other weird shibboleths
Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us The Player-Drawn Dungeon Map is a Fast Travel Hack
The Katt Kirsch Blogsperience shares Running it Back: The Case for Replaying Modules
Magnolia Keep gives us An Objective Draw Steel Vs. Daggerheart Review
21 February 2026
What xaosseed's games look like
Following up on Grace of Choir of Fire's idea of laying out how elf-games are played at specific tables so people can see the multitudes that throng beneath the umbrella of 'D&D' or even any sub-division below that.
This is broadly the set-up I came up with, with a fair chunk of 'host/hospitality' mixed in on top. My gaming set up has always had 'home' and 'away' set ups based on how much junk I was willing to haul around. Minis, battlemats and other bits of big hardware were never my thing even when I was home because I ran free-wheeling 'do what you please' games so I was not putting up with the constraints of not having the right minis - we just did theater of the mind and tokens/meeples as needed.
Home Campaign Rig
Ducal House (home campaign) is like a coelecanth; this is me running a 'perpetual campaign' in the grand old AD&D tradition I first learned.
- system is 3.5e
- three players, only play with all three; trying for twice a month, life oft gets in the way but we tend to overbook slots and accept some attrition.
- gather at my place (also shared with one of the players (in-house testing team)).
- three standard modes - morning start (1030), afternoon start (1300) or night slot (2130) which differ in that morning start will include a break for takeout and probably a stop for someone to go to their evening shift or a party. Afternoon slot has no big break, runs to exhaustion or child pickup time. Nightslot runs to exhaustion.
- set up is players on the couch; table stacked with snacks - grapes, dates, crisps, biscuits - plus a carafe of coffee (morning/afternoon) or herbal tea (night). I have my DM screen at the end of the table, set up behind that.
- We typically get in, chat for a bit - any news since last seen; usually just a week or fortnights worth.
- Sessions launch with the bard doing a recap from their notes then I do 'time, place, immediate activities' and then the players decide what they are doing.
This is broadly the set-up I came up with, with a fair chunk of 'host/hospitality' mixed in on top. My gaming set up has always had 'home' and 'away' set ups based on how much junk I was willing to haul around. Minis, battlemats and other bits of big hardware were never my thing even when I was home because I ran free-wheeling 'do what you please' games so I was not putting up with the constraints of not having the right minis - we just did theater of the mind and tokens/meeples as needed.
Home Campaign Rig
Ducal House (home campaign) is like a coelecanth; this is me running a 'perpetual campaign' in the grand old AD&D tradition I first learned.
- system is 3.5e
- three players, only play with all three; trying for twice a month, life oft gets in the way but we tend to overbook slots and accept some attrition.
- gather at my place (also shared with one of the players (in-house testing team)).
- three standard modes - morning start (1030), afternoon start (1300) or night slot (2130) which differ in that morning start will include a break for takeout and probably a stop for someone to go to their evening shift or a party. Afternoon slot has no big break, runs to exhaustion or child pickup time. Nightslot runs to exhaustion.
- set up is players on the couch; table stacked with snacks - grapes, dates, crisps, biscuits - plus a carafe of coffee (morning/afternoon) or herbal tea (night). I have my DM screen at the end of the table, set up behind that.
- We typically get in, chat for a bit - any news since last seen; usually just a week or fortnights worth.
- Sessions launch with the bard doing a recap from their notes then I do 'time, place, immediate activities' and then the players decide what they are doing.
18 February 2026
Using dragons, fiends & other powerful beings (RPG Blog Carnival)
Sea of Stars proposes Dragons, Gods and other Powerful Beings for this months prompt for the RPG Blog Carnival. Inspiration for one big idea did not strike so I am going to do quick-answers to three of the prompts:
* "From the perspective of games mastering the world: how involved do you want these beings to be? They can easily overwhelm the player characters, so what level of involvement works for both you and the players?"
* "How involved do you want the players to be in creating religions, legends, rituals?"
* "Should characters be able to affect these powerful beings? Meet them? Or should they just be background elements in the setting?"
"From the perspective of games mastering the world: how involved do you want these beings to be? They can easily overwhelm the player characters, so what level of involvement works for both you and the players?"
Having extremely powerful beings active in the world can be a useful lever for a certain style of DM'ing. I have always liked worlds where there are some forces that clearly mightier than the PCs in play. For most of my early campaigns those were dragons to the point that players told me later their rule of thumb was "if we don't know where the dragon is, we just have not spotted it yet."
I realise I got a strong stylistic steer on how dragons should from the Wyrms of the Realms series in Dragon magazine which had the 'meddling shapeshifting high-powered dragon' as a staple. I had a stalking shadow dragon as one of the semi-antagonistic patrons if I recall correctly in the Katharsis campaign. Kraken Mesa had a very large old wyrm that lived in the treasure vault of the citadel they inherited.
There were also a number of high-power fiends kicking around in the Kraken Mesa campaign, also counting as that 'involved, near-overwhelmingly powerful being' category. I tended to use those entities as scenary who could talk - there was no point trying to defeat them, you avoided them or you figured out a way to navigate them - and you tended to be way smaller than their concerns so could slip beneath their notice.
I liked dragons, fiends and the like for that position in my campaigns and I was happy for the players to interact with them as puzzles because they were beyond being a combat challenge. Their presence set the tone of not every fight being balanced or one that players could win from the get-go.
"How involved do you want the players to be in creating religions, legends, rituals?"
I like players being involved - of late I greatly enjoyed the use I have gotten in-game from the Small Gods of the animalings - originating from a GLoGtober '22 prompt - and then getting reinforced by the notion of 'Who Hears Your Oath' variant of divine intervention mechanics.
This little framework has given players reasons to pray or seek blessings at sacred or fitting places and gives a chance for things to be listening or respond. So far one of the players in the Hexcrawl25 campaign has been busily developing ritual practice for They Who Hide From Sight, including invisible sacrifices, carving their sigil in hidden places and other such practices.
The spreading of legends in general is something that I like to encourage - in the Ducal House campaign, the Bard leans hard into that - seeding songs throughout the realm and using their rapid-travel capabilities to propagate the sagas they want known far and wide. In the Hexcrawl25 campaign, there was a time-shift and one of the few things they had done before dropping off the timeline for four years was set a bunch of rumours running about one of the party being a mighty wizard - four years has been plenty of time to percolate and now they are often recognised by name when they turn up places.
Similarly as a good anti-blorb doctrinaire, I am happy for players to tell me what rituals and legends might be out there where it is something that could reasonably be known by them - even better when it is something they can base off some other in-world facts or suppositions. Wild whole cloth additions to the world get a bit more of a flavour-check but it is rare that I cannot work an idea in.
"Should characters be able to affect these powerful beings? Meet them? Or should they just be background elements in the setting?"
As mentioned above I think of these powerful beings more or less like terrain - but a sea can be drained or a mountain torn down with enough effort and the right plan. Everything is affectable with enough effort. Meeting powerful beings or especially gods has always been a staple of my games - hiking up Mount Olympus to meet Mars, patron of two of the party, was one of the earliest divine encounters I ran I believe.
There is a fine old tradition in D&D of displacing gods and powerful beings which I can get behind in some circumstances but it is not a thing to treat trivially or else it makes the achievement hollow. To defeat a gods plans, to drive off its servitors - these are the things of epic deed already. To usurp a god and cast them down should be a huge deal, hard won - and creating and seeing that campaign that does such a thing justice through would be a hell of a lot of work.
* "From the perspective of games mastering the world: how involved do you want these beings to be? They can easily overwhelm the player characters, so what level of involvement works for both you and the players?"
* "How involved do you want the players to be in creating religions, legends, rituals?"
* "Should characters be able to affect these powerful beings? Meet them? Or should they just be background elements in the setting?"
"From the perspective of games mastering the world: how involved do you want these beings to be? They can easily overwhelm the player characters, so what level of involvement works for both you and the players?"
Having extremely powerful beings active in the world can be a useful lever for a certain style of DM'ing. I have always liked worlds where there are some forces that clearly mightier than the PCs in play. For most of my early campaigns those were dragons to the point that players told me later their rule of thumb was "if we don't know where the dragon is, we just have not spotted it yet."
I realise I got a strong stylistic steer on how dragons should from the Wyrms of the Realms series in Dragon magazine which had the 'meddling shapeshifting high-powered dragon' as a staple. I had a stalking shadow dragon as one of the semi-antagonistic patrons if I recall correctly in the Katharsis campaign. Kraken Mesa had a very large old wyrm that lived in the treasure vault of the citadel they inherited.
There were also a number of high-power fiends kicking around in the Kraken Mesa campaign, also counting as that 'involved, near-overwhelmingly powerful being' category. I tended to use those entities as scenary who could talk - there was no point trying to defeat them, you avoided them or you figured out a way to navigate them - and you tended to be way smaller than their concerns so could slip beneath their notice.
I liked dragons, fiends and the like for that position in my campaigns and I was happy for the players to interact with them as puzzles because they were beyond being a combat challenge. Their presence set the tone of not every fight being balanced or one that players could win from the get-go.
"How involved do you want the players to be in creating religions, legends, rituals?"
I like players being involved - of late I greatly enjoyed the use I have gotten in-game from the Small Gods of the animalings - originating from a GLoGtober '22 prompt - and then getting reinforced by the notion of 'Who Hears Your Oath' variant of divine intervention mechanics.
This little framework has given players reasons to pray or seek blessings at sacred or fitting places and gives a chance for things to be listening or respond. So far one of the players in the Hexcrawl25 campaign has been busily developing ritual practice for They Who Hide From Sight, including invisible sacrifices, carving their sigil in hidden places and other such practices.
The spreading of legends in general is something that I like to encourage - in the Ducal House campaign, the Bard leans hard into that - seeding songs throughout the realm and using their rapid-travel capabilities to propagate the sagas they want known far and wide. In the Hexcrawl25 campaign, there was a time-shift and one of the few things they had done before dropping off the timeline for four years was set a bunch of rumours running about one of the party being a mighty wizard - four years has been plenty of time to percolate and now they are often recognised by name when they turn up places.
Similarly as a good anti-blorb doctrinaire, I am happy for players to tell me what rituals and legends might be out there where it is something that could reasonably be known by them - even better when it is something they can base off some other in-world facts or suppositions. Wild whole cloth additions to the world get a bit more of a flavour-check but it is rare that I cannot work an idea in.
"Should characters be able to affect these powerful beings? Meet them? Or should they just be background elements in the setting?"
As mentioned above I think of these powerful beings more or less like terrain - but a sea can be drained or a mountain torn down with enough effort and the right plan. Everything is affectable with enough effort. Meeting powerful beings or especially gods has always been a staple of my games - hiking up Mount Olympus to meet Mars, patron of two of the party, was one of the earliest divine encounters I ran I believe.
There is a fine old tradition in D&D of displacing gods and powerful beings which I can get behind in some circumstances but it is not a thing to treat trivially or else it makes the achievement hollow. To defeat a gods plans, to drive off its servitors - these are the things of epic deed already. To usurp a god and cast them down should be a huge deal, hard won - and creating and seeing that campaign that does such a thing justice through would be a hell of a lot of work.
16 February 2026
Shiny TTRPG links #264
Your Bloggie-nominated collation of links from about the interwebs! For more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.
A shrike for my dreams gives us Landscapes of Fear; or, How to keep PCs afraid: Part 2
Tangent Joy shares Against Intent
Failure Tolerated gives us Talking to the Dungeon
400 independent bathrooms asks What do my games look like?
Whose Measure God Could Not Take gives us How Phlox Does It
Garamondia shares How I Run Games
Infernal Pact gives us What Dom's Games Look Like
A Knight at the Opera writes Navigation Games
Goblin Punch gives us Be of Good Cheer
Story Seed Library shares A library of Solarpunk art and story seeds
Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us On Identification
Dungeon Merlin shares Exploding a Blog Post
Magnolia Keep gives us Basic Terrain for Pointcrawls
Can It Katchem? writes us Oh Fyora, We're Really In It Now
The Welsh Piper gives us The Implied Setting
Throne of Salt shares The Keep on Candcor Hill
A shrike for my dreams gives us Landscapes of Fear; or, How to keep PCs afraid: Part 2
Tangent Joy shares Against Intent
Failure Tolerated gives us Talking to the Dungeon
400 independent bathrooms asks What do my games look like?
Whose Measure God Could Not Take gives us How Phlox Does It
Garamondia shares How I Run Games
Infernal Pact gives us What Dom's Games Look Like
A Knight at the Opera writes Navigation Games
Goblin Punch gives us Be of Good Cheer
Story Seed Library shares A library of Solarpunk art and story seeds
Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us On Identification
Dungeon Merlin shares Exploding a Blog Post
Magnolia Keep gives us Basic Terrain for Pointcrawls
Can It Katchem? writes us Oh Fyora, We're Really In It Now
The Welsh Piper gives us The Implied Setting
Throne of Salt shares The Keep on Candcor Hill
14 February 2026
Actual Play: Old Man Katan and the Incredible Edible Dancing Mushroom Band
tl;dr: tried out a top-recommended Dungeon magazine adventure; good times with some interesting stylistic change revealed.
An adventure to "provide comic relief in an otherwise serious campaign" it is a nice little swamp sandbox. As an experiment, I had a go at running it straight from the book but the players went off track fairly rapidly leading to some reshuffling on the fly. I think best used as a source of good ideas and then rewire what happens when into some manner that fits with how your table likes to do things.
We get 13 pages, some very nice art and the text in triple columns. These are blocked out by 'encounter' organised around the ramp in to getting the players exploring the swamp essentially with a pair of big boxes that are then 'Glitchegumee Swamp Encounters' (ten of them) and 'Exploring the Glitchegumee Swamp' which is five locations. All the components of a neat little hexcrawl are here, just a bit scrambled.
The intro as written is you come upon a recluse, Old Man Katan, being pestered by tiny mushroom folk and decide to investigate what has gone wrong in the swamp around them. There are quite a few 'off ramps' where players could just not pick up the thread of the adventure without a very heavy hand on the steering wheel if you just leave it as is. The 'something is wrong in the swamp' set up is perfectly adequate as a hook to have brought them there to stumble over Old Man Katan - and if you take the time to set that up then people are already somewhat motivated to go onward by the time they meet Old Man Katan and you can just lean into him being him with his troubles and concerns and it will emphasise your existing hook.
There are a fair few parts in here - a good lot of useable things - but worth you working through how you use them - either retune their sequence or make them encounters, as you think most coherent to you. There are a couple of the encounters that are overpowered for the envisaged low level adventurers but I like that 'not everything is here to be fought' ethos.
I ran this for a table of strangers recently, running 1st level 5e characters. We had:
Elf Fighter
Dragonborn Ranger
Elf Rogue
Triton Paladin
Goliath Cleric
It went pretty well, a good time was had, with a bit of a lull at a point where they were unclear on how to progress but on balance I think it was better to have the freedom to act and some brief confusion than be railroaded all the way.
Session Report - beyond here, spoilers abound.
An adventure to "provide comic relief in an otherwise serious campaign" it is a nice little swamp sandbox. As an experiment, I had a go at running it straight from the book but the players went off track fairly rapidly leading to some reshuffling on the fly. I think best used as a source of good ideas and then rewire what happens when into some manner that fits with how your table likes to do things.
Art by Terry Dykstra
We get 13 pages, some very nice art and the text in triple columns. These are blocked out by 'encounter' organised around the ramp in to getting the players exploring the swamp essentially with a pair of big boxes that are then 'Glitchegumee Swamp Encounters' (ten of them) and 'Exploring the Glitchegumee Swamp' which is five locations. All the components of a neat little hexcrawl are here, just a bit scrambled.
The intro as written is you come upon a recluse, Old Man Katan, being pestered by tiny mushroom folk and decide to investigate what has gone wrong in the swamp around them. There are quite a few 'off ramps' where players could just not pick up the thread of the adventure without a very heavy hand on the steering wheel if you just leave it as is. The 'something is wrong in the swamp' set up is perfectly adequate as a hook to have brought them there to stumble over Old Man Katan - and if you take the time to set that up then people are already somewhat motivated to go onward by the time they meet Old Man Katan and you can just lean into him being him with his troubles and concerns and it will emphasise your existing hook.
There are a fair few parts in here - a good lot of useable things - but worth you working through how you use them - either retune their sequence or make them encounters, as you think most coherent to you. There are a couple of the encounters that are overpowered for the envisaged low level adventurers but I like that 'not everything is here to be fought' ethos.
I ran this for a table of strangers recently, running 1st level 5e characters. We had:
Elf Fighter
Dragonborn Ranger
Elf Rogue
Triton Paladin
Goliath Cleric
It went pretty well, a good time was had, with a bit of a lull at a point where they were unclear on how to progress but on balance I think it was better to have the freedom to act and some brief confusion than be railroaded all the way.
Session Report - beyond here, spoilers abound.
12 February 2026
Review: Fief: A Look at Medieval Society from its Lower Rungs
tl;dr: a good general primer on the details of medieval society; helps a DM better portray the ordinary folk of a game world.
"Fief - A Look at Medieval Society from its Lower Rungs" is one of those deep-cut recommendations you only get way down the message boards or after scrolling past lots of the same-old recommendations. Presented as 'ancient lore' propagated by hand in the early days - I did have a giggle when I realised that meant the mid 90s. Sure, ancient now but still contemporaneous with myself. Happily these days you can get it POD off Lulu and with the usual massive discount for Black Friday I grabbed it.
This is not specifically a game supplement per se but the author, Lisa J. Steele, has pulled all this together to make a hundred page primer that touches on all the topics that typically come up at the game table. What Fief talks to is the baseline - a quick run through of things as they were that a given DM or player can ground in before weaving through the fantastic. This is essentially a pure fluff book, but useful fluff that is probably going to be handy at any medieval or near-medieval table.
This feels like an old d20 supplement, oddly - which perhaps is an artefact of when the files got cleaned up into the format they are in now. On the one hand, it could be argued that all of the content within is accessible on the web now, with some googling and time you could run down the primary sources in contrast to when this was first published. On the other hand, this is that running around already done and compiled for you. I do not think this is going to be cited in anyones historical thesis but as a mid-weight reference for those who would like their portrayal of medieval times to have more heft at their game tables, this is a very good start.
"Fief - A Look at Medieval Society from its Lower Rungs" is one of those deep-cut recommendations you only get way down the message boards or after scrolling past lots of the same-old recommendations. Presented as 'ancient lore' propagated by hand in the early days - I did have a giggle when I realised that meant the mid 90s. Sure, ancient now but still contemporaneous with myself. Happily these days you can get it POD off Lulu and with the usual massive discount for Black Friday I grabbed it.
This is not specifically a game supplement per se but the author, Lisa J. Steele, has pulled all this together to make a hundred page primer that touches on all the topics that typically come up at the game table. What Fief talks to is the baseline - a quick run through of things as they were that a given DM or player can ground in before weaving through the fantastic. This is essentially a pure fluff book, but useful fluff that is probably going to be handy at any medieval or near-medieval table.
This feels like an old d20 supplement, oddly - which perhaps is an artefact of when the files got cleaned up into the format they are in now. On the one hand, it could be argued that all of the content within is accessible on the web now, with some googling and time you could run down the primary sources in contrast to when this was first published. On the other hand, this is that running around already done and compiled for you. I do not think this is going to be cited in anyones historical thesis but as a mid-weight reference for those who would like their portrayal of medieval times to have more heft at their game tables, this is a very good start.
09 February 2026
Shiny TTRPG links #263
Links from about the interwebs! For more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.
Prismatic Wasteland launches Bandwagon: The Map is Not the Territory But It is the Topic
The Griffin's Typewriter proposes A Challenge: Your own Knock!
Sea of Stars Beginning this month’s RPG Blog Carnival – Dragons, Gods and other Powerful Beings
Patrick Lenton in The Guardian write I don’t like organised fun, but Dungeons and Dragons is my shining nerdy light amid the darkness
Bommyknocker Press proposes Write Encounters in Networks
In the Company of Monsters shares Trophic Encounters
Crow’s Corner gives us Table-Tested Reviews of The One Ring’s Starter Sets
AMONG CATS AND BOOKS shares Common, Recalled, Obscure
Eldritch Fields asks What do I love in dungeons?
Traverse Fantasy gives us Encounter Activity Refactor
Throne of Salt shares Burgeoning Blogs 1
Connecting the Fictional Dots gives us Blogosphere 2025 Wrapped
The Katt Kirsch Blogsperience shares Leonard Cohen's Advice for Novice OSR Referees
Nrdblog gives us Gifts of Food and Shelter, Not Gold and Silver
Random Ape Encounter shares Disneyland Cocktail Parties, Sandboxes and Encounter Philosophy
Afraid of Encounters writes Afraid of Communities - Indonesian Tabletop RPG scene & LFG
Prismatic Wasteland launches Bandwagon: The Map is Not the Territory But It is the Topic
The Griffin's Typewriter proposes A Challenge: Your own Knock!
Sea of Stars Beginning this month’s RPG Blog Carnival – Dragons, Gods and other Powerful Beings
Patrick Lenton in The Guardian write I don’t like organised fun, but Dungeons and Dragons is my shining nerdy light amid the darkness
Bommyknocker Press proposes Write Encounters in Networks
In the Company of Monsters shares Trophic Encounters
Crow’s Corner gives us Table-Tested Reviews of The One Ring’s Starter Sets
AMONG CATS AND BOOKS shares Common, Recalled, Obscure
Eldritch Fields asks What do I love in dungeons?
Traverse Fantasy gives us Encounter Activity Refactor
Throne of Salt shares Burgeoning Blogs 1
Connecting the Fictional Dots gives us Blogosphere 2025 Wrapped
The Katt Kirsch Blogsperience shares Leonard Cohen's Advice for Novice OSR Referees
Nrdblog gives us Gifts of Food and Shelter, Not Gold and Silver
Random Ape Encounter shares Disneyland Cocktail Parties, Sandboxes and Encounter Philosophy
Afraid of Encounters writes Afraid of Communities - Indonesian Tabletop RPG scene & LFG
07 February 2026
Childhood inspirations from a time of shared references
For the 'childhood inspirations' blogwagon that Havoc kicked off - I wrote mine last September - because I cheated by starting at 12 so my Appendix N conformed already.
More interestingly - I recently spent a weekend gaming with my original gaming group from back in the day and among the topics of conversation was that in that time and place it was possible to be a universal geek. So little content made it as far as us that you read or watched or went to see all of it. This ties to the open and closed systems thought that Grumpy Wizard laid out - by the time we all sat to a gaming table in the early 90s we had a pretty common open-system to bring to the closed system rules of AD&D or WHFRP.
Through grim curency exchange rates for the punt and shipping costs, things were expensive and often just not available - a seventh TV channel was a big deal as I recall. VHS players and the one video rental store in town meant we'd all seen the same stuff. Even though we had the luck to be reading in English so were not further bottle-necked by need for translation, books were slow to make it as far as us. For these and other reasons, there was not a huge amount of what we would now call 'content' sloshing around and thus there was a much greater overlap between what any two folk interested in the genres would have encountered.
By comparison, since then three great new 'pools' of stuff have opened up -
* Geographic
* Archive
* New creations
More interestingly - I recently spent a weekend gaming with my original gaming group from back in the day and among the topics of conversation was that in that time and place it was possible to be a universal geek. So little content made it as far as us that you read or watched or went to see all of it. This ties to the open and closed systems thought that Grumpy Wizard laid out - by the time we all sat to a gaming table in the early 90s we had a pretty common open-system to bring to the closed system rules of AD&D or WHFRP.
Through grim curency exchange rates for the punt and shipping costs, things were expensive and often just not available - a seventh TV channel was a big deal as I recall. VHS players and the one video rental store in town meant we'd all seen the same stuff. Even though we had the luck to be reading in English so were not further bottle-necked by need for translation, books were slow to make it as far as us. For these and other reasons, there was not a huge amount of what we would now call 'content' sloshing around and thus there was a much greater overlap between what any two folk interested in the genres would have encountered.
By comparison, since then three great new 'pools' of stuff have opened up -
* Geographic
* Archive
* New creations
04 February 2026
Secret Information In Domain Games - Handle With Care
tl;dr: espionage and information warfare in domain games needs to be handled with care to avoid slowing the game and diminishing player agency.
A point raised in Infernal Pacts Cataphracts retrospective and I saw myself in Empyrean Dynasty - people getting inside other peoples information loops leaving a sour taste with players where they did not know those moves were possible.
Getting false information through from the GM feels bad because players did not know their information channel was lies - same problem with false hydras, red herrings, etc. - it requires very specifically invested players who love being paranoid about their information.
Typically players suspend disbelief to fully trust the imperfect channel that is DM comms and when that is revealed to be lies, then the reaction is "well what is the point?" It is often tricky enough to sweep together the clues and information about a setting to be able to make an in-world reasoned assessment of the situation that players are unenthusiastic to have to sift those clues and information for reliability from there.
Players have only so much attention in the first place for a game, if they did not sign up for an infowarfare or opsec-forward game, then that is just friction before they get to do what they want. I sign up for chess, I might be unhappy to be forced to play rounds of poker before every move. If the infowar game does not excite them, then you will never get to the strategy moves and the game is toast.
Twisted intel has its place, but it is a question to be carefully considered whether allowing one player to lean into that information-warfare layer in a domain game is clever play or will the other players (who are not aware this active information distortion may be happening) consider it changing the rules of the game without players assent.
The Empyrean Dynasty games were clear that information warfare was happening, which made it fine, though the cycles and subcycles of intercepts, precognitives, order revisions, further intercepts, etc. slowed later turns to a crawl - particularly where life happening further delayed the move-counter-moves - leading me to suggest again it is to be handled with care. Time-limits on orders can work.
I think it is essentially a question of PVP - some folk enjoy it, others do not, so being very clear on whether or not it is possible allows people to play with full agency and not end up feeling like near-NPCs in someone elses game.
If players only find out after that fact that there was a whole infowar pvp layer going on, they will feel stripped of their agency, low-level players in a high-level game, or that there is no point in acting because other players are inside their decision loop. Messing with player agency, is to be treated with extreme caution.
I am a big fan of 'the twist' over 'the red herring' - where a new piece of information puts existing information in new context - or a 'big reveal' which is high impact new information. For a masterfully done example, see "A campaign of baits and switches" from Zzarchov Kowolski. I find that you typically have un-equally distributed attention among players, through life intensity, committments, schedules, etc. some will have more capacity than others off the table and allowing those players to run rings around other players because they have time to do so is another thing to be treated with caution.
All told, I think secret information and the like is fine to have as long as it is a known quantity and either everyone is into that or there is some accomodation - players buddy up and one who can works up good information for both to act on - better than "too bad" for those without the inclination or wherewithal to play that layer of the game.
A point raised in Infernal Pacts Cataphracts retrospective and I saw myself in Empyrean Dynasty - people getting inside other peoples information loops leaving a sour taste with players where they did not know those moves were possible.
Getting false information through from the GM feels bad because players did not know their information channel was lies - same problem with false hydras, red herrings, etc. - it requires very specifically invested players who love being paranoid about their information.
Typically players suspend disbelief to fully trust the imperfect channel that is DM comms and when that is revealed to be lies, then the reaction is "well what is the point?" It is often tricky enough to sweep together the clues and information about a setting to be able to make an in-world reasoned assessment of the situation that players are unenthusiastic to have to sift those clues and information for reliability from there.
Players have only so much attention in the first place for a game, if they did not sign up for an infowarfare or opsec-forward game, then that is just friction before they get to do what they want. I sign up for chess, I might be unhappy to be forced to play rounds of poker before every move. If the infowar game does not excite them, then you will never get to the strategy moves and the game is toast.
Twisted intel has its place, but it is a question to be carefully considered whether allowing one player to lean into that information-warfare layer in a domain game is clever play or will the other players (who are not aware this active information distortion may be happening) consider it changing the rules of the game without players assent.
The Empyrean Dynasty games were clear that information warfare was happening, which made it fine, though the cycles and subcycles of intercepts, precognitives, order revisions, further intercepts, etc. slowed later turns to a crawl - particularly where life happening further delayed the move-counter-moves - leading me to suggest again it is to be handled with care. Time-limits on orders can work.
I think it is essentially a question of PVP - some folk enjoy it, others do not, so being very clear on whether or not it is possible allows people to play with full agency and not end up feeling like near-NPCs in someone elses game.
If players only find out after that fact that there was a whole infowar pvp layer going on, they will feel stripped of their agency, low-level players in a high-level game, or that there is no point in acting because other players are inside their decision loop. Messing with player agency, is to be treated with extreme caution.
I am a big fan of 'the twist' over 'the red herring' - where a new piece of information puts existing information in new context - or a 'big reveal' which is high impact new information. For a masterfully done example, see "A campaign of baits and switches" from Zzarchov Kowolski. I find that you typically have un-equally distributed attention among players, through life intensity, committments, schedules, etc. some will have more capacity than others off the table and allowing those players to run rings around other players because they have time to do so is another thing to be treated with caution.
All told, I think secret information and the like is fine to have as long as it is a known quantity and either everyone is into that or there is some accomodation - players buddy up and one who can works up good information for both to act on - better than "too bad" for those without the inclination or wherewithal to play that layer of the game.
02 February 2026
Shiny TTRPG links #262
Shiny links this week are wholly from a series of conversations on discord pulling up links from the past - see if you can guess the themes.
For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival.
Zedeck Siew's gave us DECOLONISING D&D
Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse shared Counter-colonial Heistcrawl: previous high scores
A Most Majestic Fly Whisk wrote An Arrow for the General: Confronting D&D-as-Western in the Kalahari
Goobernuts' Blog gave us I’m Adding Colonizers To My Setting
Cyborgs and Sorcerers gave us A Simple Metric of Player Agency
Rise Up Comus shared Rolemaster-esque Critical Tables, or, "No more hit points"
Beneath Foreign Planets gave us Bodies Shall Be Broken: A Free-Form Wound and Dismemberment System for TTRPGs
Wayspell wrote How I got into D&D
DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER shared Advantage and Impact
Save vs Total Party Kill gave us Silent Titans - Mystery
Goblin Punch wrote Just-In-Time Compilation
What Would Conan Do? gave us How to be an adventurer
Signs in the Wilderness shared Better living through alchemy
The Retired Adventurer gave us A Brief Note on Alignment
d4 Caltrops shared One Hundred Holy Taboos
Gorgon Bones wrote On Alignment
Dungeon of Signs gave us Gold for Experience in 5th Edition D&D
Jeffs Gameblog wrote eXPloration
Hill Cantons gave us Pendragon D&D: the Matrix Method
Adam Dray on Obsidian Portal shared City of Brass: A “West Marxist” campaign
Rocket-Propelled Game wrote Marx & Monsters: A Radical Leftist Fantasy Sandbox
Legacy of the Bieth gave us A Spectre (7+3 HD) Is Haunting the Flaeness: Towards a Leftist OSR
For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival.
Zedeck Siew's gave us DECOLONISING D&D
Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse shared Counter-colonial Heistcrawl: previous high scores
A Most Majestic Fly Whisk wrote An Arrow for the General: Confronting D&D-as-Western in the Kalahari
Goobernuts' Blog gave us I’m Adding Colonizers To My Setting
Cyborgs and Sorcerers gave us A Simple Metric of Player Agency
Rise Up Comus shared Rolemaster-esque Critical Tables, or, "No more hit points"
Beneath Foreign Planets gave us Bodies Shall Be Broken: A Free-Form Wound and Dismemberment System for TTRPGs
Wayspell wrote How I got into D&D
DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER shared Advantage and Impact
Save vs Total Party Kill gave us Silent Titans - Mystery
Goblin Punch wrote Just-In-Time Compilation
What Would Conan Do? gave us How to be an adventurer
Signs in the Wilderness shared Better living through alchemy
The Retired Adventurer gave us A Brief Note on Alignment
d4 Caltrops shared One Hundred Holy Taboos
Gorgon Bones wrote On Alignment
Dungeon of Signs gave us Gold for Experience in 5th Edition D&D
Jeffs Gameblog wrote eXPloration
Hill Cantons gave us Pendragon D&D: the Matrix Method
Adam Dray on Obsidian Portal shared City of Brass: A “West Marxist” campaign
Rocket-Propelled Game wrote Marx & Monsters: A Radical Leftist Fantasy Sandbox
Legacy of the Bieth gave us A Spectre (7+3 HD) Is Haunting the Flaeness: Towards a Leftist OSR
01 February 2026
Incentivising challenges with tactility (City26)
Like any 'creation project' the tactility of it is important for me; I find myself picking some slightly novel approach to note taking each time to keep things interesting and to make the projects distinct.
Previous examples:
* For the Spelljammer Academy run, it started as a print of the four official adventures held with treasury tags then various odds and ends of loose paper were added to the back, including some experiments with gate-fold-type planetary system overlays. It was messy but a characterful mess.
* My home campaign is a double stack - world notes plus session notes - all done on the backs of scrap paper and old bills.
* My Friday night hexcrawl campaign is a similar double stack plus a GM binder of plastic-pocket ready reference stuff for gaming-on-the-move; one-page monster manual, code of conduct, treasure tables, etc.
For this City26 campaign I actually got started while flying - so I had some boarding passes to hand and started with those. I have a big stack of old boarding passes that were kept with a half-notion of needing bookmarks, now they can finally be used and it makes this project feel distinct.
A personal quirk, working on the small surface of the back of a boarding pass makes the demand feel less onerous; even if the output demanded is broadly alike, I only have to fill a boarding pass so feels less. I also habitually like to write very small which helps.
This also makes the project feel nicely tactile; as observed by many others elsewhere, it can be easier to get stuff done working physically than typing it up.
After a few weeks of working on this I am broadly following a refinement of my NaNoWriMo process:
- following Fleming - set yourself up to start the next session hot by stopping halfway through a paragraph
- this translates to 'create the template for the next session' by blocking out the next boarding pass
- all good ideas get noted onto the master sheets
- starting a session means blocking out the obvious stuff first, principal features, maybe controlling faction
- with that start done, block out some encounters, maybe plot hooks as they become obvious
- flesh out everything more, only a boarding pass of space to be terse
- NPCs are last; they usually are obvious by then - who is evidently around from the encounters, factions and plot hooks
- do not attempt to roll straight into a second session; take a break first
After a break you may do a second whole session on the same structure. Make your restart as low friction as possible, but do not pre-pick it; leave yourself room to be inspired anew.
My other aides I use;
* Some powerpoint image creation to help understand the shape, block-out how many districts in each part of the hive.
* Voice-transcription to ramble away about ideas while doing laundry.
* Reading through the old Rogue Trader book and noting ideas; trying to stay away from the modern stuff and that 'orthodox 40k' approach.
I am waiting for inspiration to slow and then I will sift back over those ideas and tease out the ones not yet used.
Previous examples:
* For the Spelljammer Academy run, it started as a print of the four official adventures held with treasury tags then various odds and ends of loose paper were added to the back, including some experiments with gate-fold-type planetary system overlays. It was messy but a characterful mess.
* My home campaign is a double stack - world notes plus session notes - all done on the backs of scrap paper and old bills.
* My Friday night hexcrawl campaign is a similar double stack plus a GM binder of plastic-pocket ready reference stuff for gaming-on-the-move; one-page monster manual, code of conduct, treasure tables, etc.
For this City26 campaign I actually got started while flying - so I had some boarding passes to hand and started with those. I have a big stack of old boarding passes that were kept with a half-notion of needing bookmarks, now they can finally be used and it makes this project feel distinct.
A personal quirk, working on the small surface of the back of a boarding pass makes the demand feel less onerous; even if the output demanded is broadly alike, I only have to fill a boarding pass so feels less. I also habitually like to write very small which helps.
This also makes the project feel nicely tactile; as observed by many others elsewhere, it can be easier to get stuff done working physically than typing it up.
After a few weeks of working on this I am broadly following a refinement of my NaNoWriMo process:
- following Fleming - set yourself up to start the next session hot by stopping halfway through a paragraph
- this translates to 'create the template for the next session' by blocking out the next boarding pass
- all good ideas get noted onto the master sheets
- starting a session means blocking out the obvious stuff first, principal features, maybe controlling faction
- with that start done, block out some encounters, maybe plot hooks as they become obvious
- flesh out everything more, only a boarding pass of space to be terse
- NPCs are last; they usually are obvious by then - who is evidently around from the encounters, factions and plot hooks
- do not attempt to roll straight into a second session; take a break first
After a break you may do a second whole session on the same structure. Make your restart as low friction as possible, but do not pre-pick it; leave yourself room to be inspired anew.
My other aides I use;
* Some powerpoint image creation to help understand the shape, block-out how many districts in each part of the hive.
* Voice-transcription to ramble away about ideas while doing laundry.
* Reading through the old Rogue Trader book and noting ideas; trying to stay away from the modern stuff and that 'orthodox 40k' approach.
I am waiting for inspiration to slow and then I will sift back over those ideas and tease out the ones not yet used.
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