Spider Queen

I've danced around solo rping for a while, never quite taking the plunge on it. I used to pore over the Tunnels and Trolls solo gamebooks as a kid, but always felt constrained by them. Attempts to make my own dungeon-generation tables proved too cumbersome, while dungeon generators on the internet had too many drawbacks - seeing the whole layout at once, being stocked generically, and of course the ever present "not invented here syndrome". My own settings, or my own regions in others' settings, never felt fleshed out enough. Or, more accurately, they suffered from having exactly as much detail as was needed for the present adventure - there was no hidden detail to discover, none of Tolkein's "towers of a distant city, glimpsed through a sunlit mist". Well, two things have happened to convince me to have another go. A wizard playing with himself;  Image by Bob Giadrosich First, Chris McDowell, one of my all-time design icons (which sounds more like a fas

So I have a Golden Rule. It goes: "Write about what interests you; don't write to make yourself angry over basically nothing." It's important - I abandoned my previous blog (may it rest in peace) because it started feeling like a toxic way of venting gaming frustration without achieving any real catharsis. Hopefully I won't end up trampling all over my maxim in what follows. And hopefully you'll find it interesting too. Here goes. The so-called "Rule of Cool" needs to go. In my opinion, citing it, especially citing it often, should be seen as a form of GMing malpractice. I'm sorry Matt Mercer, I know that that and "How d'you wanna do this" are your legacy. I hope you can rest content with the number of new people you got to introduce to the fun of doing silly voices. Those people are better off now, and it's because of you. To avoid just ragging on the RoC (see golden rule above), I'm going to advance a specific argument: Th