Spider Queen

 Musings I was having today: It's pretty well known that Gary Gygax was a stickler for detail when it came to dungeons - the name "Gygaxian naturalism" is used to refer to the approach to dungeon design that foregrounds the dungeon's "ecology", and demands a level of realism usually regarded as absurd in the context of a fantasy game. There's a lot to unpack here that I'm going to try to skip over. For one, the idea of realism being opposed  to fantasy is, in my view, an irritating fallacy. The response "Well it's fantasy, it's not supposed to be realistic" misses the point: An immersive and engaging fantasy requires at least some level of consistency, and a certain amount of relatability to anchor the players' interpretation of what's going on. If one nitpicks a detail like a character's being able to shrug off a stab wound, or goods in a shop costing more than anyone could possibly afford, the response "Well why d...

A very short one today. I've been continuing with my open table sandbox in The Black Hack, and wanted to share my process for handling death and dismemberment when characters drop to 0hp, because I think it's been working really well at the table. I'll first explain the ritual very briefly, then explain why it works , and why I think it finds a good middle ground between the old and new schools. 🕷 First, allow me to introduce  The Dice That Will Kill You . The Dice That Will Kill You My brother bought me these as a Christmas present - they are cast in metal, and very heavy, like little angry sea mines. They have already scored and dented our dining-room table. Note the skull, barely visible, on the bag. The Dice That Will Kill You are what give the procedure its special ritual tone. These are the special dice that only come out when a character is near death. On such occasions, I hand their player the bag, and recite the exact words: "<Character name>, these ar...

I've hit on an idea for how to run XP in a way that will work for my upcoming sandbox game using The Black Hack. The system itself should be pretty much transferrable to any classic D&D derivative that uses race-as-class (I've hacked the "kindred classes" from B/X into my game), or with some tweaks for ones that don't. The one complaint people consistently lodge against The Black Hack is that it doesn't contain much scope for levelling up. This confuses me slightly - as far as I can tell, it offers about as much scope as the early editions of D&D on which it's modelled. That is, fighter-types get better at hitting things, magic users (in the broad sense) get access to more powerful spells, thieves' skill at thief-y tasks increases, as does their backstab damage, and of course everyone gets more hp. Anyway, as I understand it, advancement in these games is largely supposed to be driven by acquisition, especially of magic items - your +2 to hit e...

I've only just realised that's a punny title. It appears I can't help myself. I'm always trying to think of how to explain the OSR, especially to relatively inexperienced gamers, who are often the ones to rock up at my table. It's tricky for a number of reasons, not least of which are that it's largely defined in contrast to a playstyle these new players will have little or no experience with, and that the priorities of the OSR as a quote-unquote "movement" apparently keep shifting. But I think I've found a new way to describe it, the way I'm going to explain to people, from now on, why you'd play using an older ruleset, or even something completely different that's designed to evoke  an older ruleset. Do you remember hearing about ttrpgs for the first time? It's an experience I imagine you and I share, and share with a lot of people. I can't remember the actual event itself, but I definitely remember the experience - confusion ...

At the risk of stating the obvious, the B/X cleric is a little underpowered compared to their modern equivalent. Or should I say that the modern cleric is over powered compared to their B/X ancestor? I've blogged before about how the Cleric's niche has been removed by increments, to the point where there's now nothing particularly unique to the class. But this doesn't necessarily diminish the appeal of taking the cloth; the fact that the cleric has no particular specialism in the modern game means that they end up being pretty darn good at everything, arguably embodying the role of kickass warrior-spellcaster much better than either the Paladin or the Arcane Knight, and all without much in the way of religious requirements or limitations. But 'twas not always thus. It seems almost absurd now, but the B/X Cleric started play with no spells. This means that they, in fact, couldn't make use of their trademark healing abilities until several successful dungeon-craw...

I stumbled upon this article recently, and it kind of set me off. I've had a lot of thoughts stewing lately, as of the Kenku Structure post, and this seemed to trigger some of them into coalescing. The article does what I've seen a lot of things purport to do in the past, which is provide alternatives for the "You meet in a tavern..." campaign opening. As a culture, fantasy gaming has a strange relationship to this trope; some want to move past it as a particularly tired cliché, while some counter-revolutionaries want to reclaim or rehabilitate it. It's got to the point where it's become difficult even to play it straight, where you're basically running an affectionate parody if you do adopt the trope. The interesting point for me is that I think the argument that we need to spice up our campaign intros basically misses the point of the original trope. Say you meet in a tavern with your crew of adventurers, and some shadowy figure in a cloak comes to you...

 A tiny, tiny post today. I've been working on writing things for the game I'm putting together (an unholy fusion of Risus, Blades in the Dark, and other games from around the place that I'm sure I'm cribbing from but can't exactly recall). Specifically, one section I've worked on, part of the GM section, was "Why make this game?" Terribly self-indulgent as it sounds, my point was to get some thoughts down about what the game does , and especially what it might do differently  to other games that would help people run it by telling them what sort of dynamic I was shooting for with my design decisions. Sort of like telling someone just starting Blood (a 2.5d game from the 90s) "Don't try and play this like Halo, or it'll be deeply unenjoyable. Here's what the developers were thinking when they put it together..." The point I'm rambling around to is that I get a feeling sometimes from commentators on the indie rpg scene that the...

Been a while since posting, but that's because I've been cooking up a fairly in-depth one.  Randomness as it works in games generally, and in particular in ttrpgs, has an interesting feature to do with buying into different layers of the gameplay. This basically means that you construct games within a game. This has implications not just for good game design, but also for perceived fairness. The old-school style (if it's coherent enough to call it that) is often criticised for being unfair or confrontational, or at least overly blasé about killing off characters. Hopefully this will explain how the approach is a) justified and b) actually a valuable thing to bring to games . 🕷 Allow me to explain. At length, I'm afraid. Recently, I’ve been playing the excellent indie videogame Noita. Noita is a roguelike, meaning the environment you explore is generated randomly each playthrough. At each level, you get to a shrine, where you can heal up. If you somehow bring a mo...

For my new Old School Essentials campaign, I wanted to give my critters a dose of flavour. I love the tiny greebly monsters, but they can seem a little bland, especially when fighting hordes of them at low levels. My solution is to make them distinctive - by which I mean "weird". I love Kobolds, and I love Ratfolk, so kobolds largely resemble ambulatory rats in my campaign world (the fact that I have a load of Skaven miniatures is purely coincidental). I struggled for a while to give goblins a flavour, but I've found a way that I like. I've always wondered about why Brian Froud's goblins looked so heterogeneous - now I know why. Goblin Soup: Goblins are a bit like a lumpy soup or a gumbo. Stuff floats to the surface from time to time, and the lumps you get in one bowl might not match those in another - goblins don't necessarily share all the same characteristics. Plus goblins can combine. This process involves an incantation and the use of an awful substance ...