Recently I’ve been thinking about this Paul Bowles quote, which I first saw on Brandon Lee‘s gravestone, in relation to gaming: “Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How […]
Twenty more moonrises Read More »
Reading Rappan Athuk (paid link) renewed my interest in checking out Swords & Wizardry (paid link), and it also made me curious about the differences between S&W Core and S&W Complete.[1] I searched for a simple summary of those differences and kept seeing variations on this: “Core is the 3 LBBs + Supplement I (Greyhawk); Complete
Comparing Swords & Wizardry Core vs. Complete Read More »
While prowling around for a deal on Tome of Horrors Complete I stumbled across this PDF bundle on the Frog God website — the aptly named Superbundle for Swords & Wizardry. It’s broken into 3 tiers: $5, $13, and $25. I love monster books, and in addition to ToHC this bundle includes two others that
The Frog God Swords & Wizardry Superbundle Read More »
Around the end of the year, I usually take a look back at my gaming over the previous 12 months.[1] This time around, I decided to graph my board game and RPG sessions for every year for which I have complete data: 2009-2017.[2] Here’s a graph comparing RPG and board game plays for these years,
A snapshot of my RPG and board game plays, 2009-2017 Read More »
I was noodling about RPG setting material I’ve always meant to read, and I remembered a truly excellent thing: Stephan Michael Sechi, creator of Talislanta, generously makes available virtually ever Talislanta product ever published in PDF, with permission granted to download, modify, and print for personal use only, for free. That’s over 30 PDFs spanning
Free Talislanta PDFs, and where to start Read More »
My Seattle group is coming up on a year of Ars Magica [paid link] play, using 5e — my first experience with Ars. We’ve played around 20 sessions (I’ve missed a couple, but I’ve been there for 18), covering about a year of in-game time, and I say without hyperbole that I will happily play this
Ars Magica after 18 sessions: what an amazing RPG Read More »
I missed the boat on Chris McDowall’s Into the Odd (paid link), but eventually figured out that I was missing something splendid. It’s out of print, but the PDF is a dandy $8 and I love coil binding, so here we are. Here’s the blurb: “Into the Odd contains everything you need to create a character
Into the Odd is delightful Read More »
Earlier this month, at Go Play Northwest, I played a game of Traveller Carcosa run by Alex Mayo that really made me want to play more Traveller. It also reminded me to prod my long-simmering, largely unrequited interest in Traveller and see if Mongoose Traveller was still my favorite iteration. I then bumped into this
A new appreciation for the 1977 version of Traveller Read More »
Thanks to the inimitable Alex Schroeder, I followed a link to this excellent 2005 essay by Michael Andre-Driussi: Deciphering the Text Foundations of Traveller. Here’s Driussi’s thesis: “The creators of CT wanted the anarchic, amoral, and violent adventure of fantasy role playing translated into a science fiction setting. They also wanted a kind of science
Traveller’s literary sources Read More »
After I posted about Devil Ghost’s character generator for Classic Traveller, Frank Filz mentioned that he hosts the same generator on his site — and that he’s made it user-configurable. I tried it out, and it rocks. To get a character, just open the generator page. For a new one, just refresh the page. Easy
Frank Filz’s excellent Classic Traveller character generator Read More »
