Lethality as Design Language: What Character Death Actually Communicates

Usually there is this funny moment that most players who has cross from modern D&D into OSR territory experience. A sort of rite of passage, if you will. It usually happens in the first or second session. The character they built, the one with that nice backstory and all those personality notes and the carefully […]

What a Documentary About Mass Killers Taught Me About Playing Vampire: The Masquerade

Some ideas come uninvited. At my university classes this week I attended an analysis of perpetrator trauma theory under the context of Erin McGlothlin’s essay Perpetrator Trauma published in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma with a corresponding viewing of the documentary film The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer. The course had nothing […]

The TTRPG as Oral Literature: Storytelling, Memory, and the Ephemeral Campaign

Around this time last year, I wrote what is one of my favorite articles from the blog. An article about why TTRPGs feel so special to me. And part of the argument rested on the idea that these games belong to the tradition of folk art: communal, informal, passed hand to hand through enthusiasm rather […]

How Dragonlance Invented the TTRPG Novel and What That Cost the Hobby

In 1984, TSR released a module written by Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Despair. Hickman was a writer and designer who has been working at the company for about 3 years. However, even with the short time spent in the company, he already made his mark when, a year prior, he wrote alongside his wife, Laura, […]

The Reaction Roll, the Morale Roll, and the Monster That Doesn’t Want to Fight

Here is a scene that has played out at countless tables running D&D since, well, I think at least from the 3rd edition days. The party rounds a corner and lo and behold, here are goblins. The goblins are there because the encounter table said goblins, or because the adventure module placed them in this […]

First Among Thieves: A Review of Two Sides to the Coin

To be completely honest with you, initially, I did not pay that much attention to this game. Gods, what a fool I was. Because out of the trifecta released by Osprey last year, Two Sides to the Coin is perhaps the best of them, and not only is it a great TTRPG, it is, at […]

Beyond Good and Evil: The Paths of Enlightenment and the Alien Morality of Vampire: The Masquerade

From my experience, there is a moment that happens at almost every Vampire: The Masquerade table, usually somewhere in the first couple of sessions. A player’s character does something monstrous. Not dramatically monstrous, no torture or senseless mass killing, but instead something a bit more quiet, even practical in the moment. But still monstrous to […]

Prestige Classes: The Best Design Space D&D Ever Abandoned

There is a specific type of character fantasy that was achieved by 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons better than any other edition before or since. Not the fantasy of making your character up as you go. The fantasy of knowing what you want your character to be from session one, having a goal in mind, […]

The Book That Built the World of Darkness (Whether White Wolf Admits It or Not)

There is a version of Vampire: The Masquerade that does not exist. In that version, the vampire is still fundamentally a predator. Gothic, certainly. Brooding, perhaps. But essentially a monster: something took directly from folklore, something cold and inhuman that wears a human face as a disguise. That version of the vampire has a long […]

Stealing from the Rich and Giving to The Poor: A Review of The Hooded Man

Once again, the fine folk at Osprey Games graciously provided us with a review copy of The Hooded Man. A title I confess, I found very interesting from the moment we received word of it. With my penchant for historical settings, it stands to reason that the story revolving around Robin Hood’s escapades now turned […]