Consider this a manifesto of sorts. Inspired by brutalist architecture and the development of brutalist web design , I want to get the ball rolling on the Brutalist Manifesto for adventure game design. I consider these to be principles to strive for, but not dogmatically adhere to.   Image generated with Midjourney. Usability Functionality First The form, text and presentation should be functional. They should be usable for the players at the table. The form should be practical and easy to arrange on the table. The text should be concise and easy to read and reference. The presentation should convey information that reduces the need for text. Material-Adaptive The game should function well in any format—printed, online, or hand-written. Whether players are using graph paper or a digital tablet, the game should adapt to their needs. This can mean supplying character sheets for physical play and online play. Consider the environmental impact when designing physical components. Ease ...

This isn’t a typical blogpost for me, but I felt like writing it and reflecting on my experience with rpgs. Image generated with Midjourney. It’s okay to have a mediocre game session. They happen for a variety of reasons. Overall, experiencing those will let you appreciate the better sessions later, and it might prompt some thinking about how to improve your methods. It’s okay if a group silently dissolves. Life happens. People get new jobs, children or have to move, etc. Having a group that lasts forever is probably great, but to me it seems like a unicorn more than anything else. Similarly, it’s okay if a player quits the group. Don’t blame anyone. It’s better that the person figures out what they really want to do. It’s okay to change what you like. Sometimes that means moving back and forth between systems. I don’t think there ever will be a One True Solution. Just play what you want to play. It’s okay to get tired of running a specific campaign, and it’s also okay to end it when t...

The following is a guest post written by Vincenzo Zeni. He is a regular player at my Tempest campaign, and he wrote an excellent post regarding travel. You can reach him on my discord server or by contacting him directly on discord with the username Alzred#1541. Enjoy!  Mountains by Aurélien. Used with permission.  

So travel is a big part of adventures. Braving majestic mountains, navigating insidious swamps and traversing foreboding forests. Lord of the Rings, the books as well as the movies, would not be the same without their iconic locations. Minas Tirith’s grandeur is incredible in contrast to the Shire. Interspersed between these grand locations, there are also the lesser locations, such as Bree, the Watchtower, the calcified Trolls, the Argonaths, I could go on forever. Yet, it has often been my experience that journeys in RPGs fall short of this. Often in spite of procedures. I don’t have any solutions… yet. In this post, I will describe some thoughts I’ve had about travel in roleplaying games.   Picture by Frank Winkler , used with permission. Where is the fun? For the most part, I’ve experienced travel roleplay in roughly two forms. One is basically a quick summary of “what happened” as the party went from A to B, with varying degrees of descriptions of the landscape. The other is t...

In this post, I’m going to discuss the most prevalent game mechanic that nobody seems to talk about.  The most important game mechanic in roleplaying games is not about dice rolling and target numbers. It’s about how we share information - the conversation where we describe and act on the world we present. I haven’t landed on a name for it, but I’d like to refer to Chris Engle’s concept of “verbal analysis” - more on that later.  Image by  Pexels , used with permission.

I’ve been running and playing in various 2400 and Into the Odd games lately. These are two games that exist in the rules light part of the roleplaying games spectrum. Both games are quite ruthless in their approach to combat. 2400 doesn’t have combat rules per se, but offers a catch-hall saving throw rule. Into the Odd famously has auto-hit with some damage reduction based on armor. I've got some thoughts about both games. Illustration by Richard Duijnstee , used with permission.  

In the last 12 or so months, I’ve been delving deep into the FKR rabbit hole. It has thoroughly changed the way I play and let me focus more on adventures than ever before. For example, writing things like stat blocks and looking up rules are now a thing of the past. But there are some issues that I think also need to be addressed. In this post I’m going to talk about something I call the “Owl Problem”. How hard can it be? Okay, what’s the deal with bringing owls into this? Well, it’s inspired by the meme above, but related to running rules-light games. In my experience, newcomers to the hobby have almost no issue in joining a session and playing as a PC. However, as a newcomer to running a session, most rules-light games offer little to no guidance.  One central idea to free kriegsspiel is that the referee can just dispense with rules and dice in favor of relying on their experience. This worked out a lot for prussian officers, but a beginner in the ttrpg world doesn't have the sa...

This is a non-exhaustive tour of how I run games. I might make more posts like this in the future. I don’t think of this as a practical guide, but more of a reflection of how I think I run games.  Me, preparing for a session. Illustration by Bert ! Prep If I’m preparing for a session with new players that I don’t know well, I typically start out with some safety talk. Lines and veils, X Cards and such are features I make available. These are great to prevent uncomfortable or harmful experiences in play.  I think things through. Usually I do this whenever my brain has idle time. I might be in the shower or on a hike. What I think about are where the players might want to go, what kind of encounters there might be,  and what other events might influence the session. Thinking through these things once makes it easier for me to recall and run in sessions later.  I also map out places by making node graphs. I think they are more flexible and useful than gridded maps. I do...

In this post, I’m going to outline some ideas for how to handle campaigns when it’s difficult to get the same players at the table consistently. You have probably seen the memes. Maybe experienced it first hand yourself how hard it can be to schedule a game.  What I offer is by no means a silver bullet, but it may make things easier to run. And of course, none of this is necessary if just one of your players will miss the session. This is more relevant for those who have several players missing. The first thing to tackle is… Linearity For many it is a foregone conclusion that whatever follows in the next session should be in continuation from the last session. But is that really necessary? In my mind, it isn’t. It may be at odds with consistency, but it hasn’t surfaced often as a problem in my games. Put a pin in that - One Shot Mentality What benefits are there to non-linearity? Let’s say you have a group that is crawling through the tomb in Winter’s Daughter and your group stops ...

I’ve cooked up a setting recently, which I’ve called Netherlight. Prime sources of inspiration are Treasure Planet and Warhammer (both fantasy and 40k). I want to call it “pulse rifle fantasy” in a nod to “flintlock fantasy”. I’ve been playing Netherlight using a modification of 24XX . 24XX, the SRD of the 2400 micro games by Jason Tocci, is an absolute gem of a game. What I like about it is how easy it is to run, especially with a FKR mindset. No wonder I want to adopt it as a framework for my Netherlight project. Incidentally, I stumbled on an issue when it came to making an item list for my setting. Here’s how 2400 describes its weapons: PISTOL: Upgrade with auto, DNA-lock, flechette-firing, call-to-hand, self-destruct, silenced. RIFLE: Bulky, accurate at longer ranges than pistol. Upgrade with anti-materiel, auto, collapsible, DNA-lock, flechette-firing, grenade attachment, identify friend/foe, scope. Keep in mind, 2400 is a cyberpunk setting, so it’s pretty easy to imagine how a...

 If I look back at my history of roleplaying games, I see one clear arc. The rulebooks got slimmer and slimmer. My gaming started out in earnest with Dungeons & Dragons 3e, which is about an inch thick rulebook. Now, I play systems that barely take up a page. This is mostly the result of having experienced sessions that hit a slow pace for a variety of reasons, such as granular combat, or just discussions about how spells worked.  When I learned about the OSR, I was overcome with mixed feelings. The retro-clones seemed excessively punitive, with their “ save or die ” mechanics, the anemic hit point amounts, and total lack of feats. At the time, the table I was playing at was hosted by a GM that was flirting with OSR, but trying to make it work with Pathfinder. This led to some conflicting expectations, and inevitably some tough discussions. However, I was left with a copy of Swords & Wizardry in my hands, and that sort of started my journey into the OSR.  Running ...

For the last ten years, I have been really committed to making stuff for tabletop games. Despite that amount of time, I have only ever published one thing for roleplaying games - that’s an 18-page zine. Yet, I have a digital graveyard of games projects on my Google Drive account.  What is happening here? 

  Recently, I was a player in a campaign using the Knave rules. The setting was inspired by Norse mythology close to the end times - Ragnarok. Amongst many locations, the Referee had put in set-dressed versions of Keep on the Borderlands and Barrowmaze. Despite the delves and riches, I never actually reached level 3 or higher with any of the characters I played. I delved deep with only 5 hit points, and it was great!  They all have 5 hit points, but so do you. 

  Despite there being a lot of dungeons out there, very few of them are meant to be played with a sci-fi ruleset like Traveller or Stars Without Number. There are a number of assumptions that go out the window with the tech levels in question. In this post, I will discuss some thoughts that appeared in the #workshop channel on the OSR Discord. If you want in on this discussion, join us over at the #sci-fi-scrapyard and talk shop. Link: https://discord.gg/PRg3RWJ

I’ll be upfront - it’s about the spaceship your PCs call home. If you run a sci-fi OSR game with a spaceship like the Millennium Falcon , the Serenity, or the Rocinante , then chances are your PCs consider it a mobile home.  Having floor plans for the spaceship is great. It gives your players a sense of the vessel. Add to that, letting them “move in” by assigning crew quarters is also great for immersion and roleplaying. But as a referee, you can also go ahead and give the spaceship a sense of character .  The Raker was real fast, but its coffee machine kept breaking apart.

The Assassin’s Creed series has a variable reputation since the initial game was released in 2007,  with Ubisoft constantly churning out new titles. While there are some highlights, such as Black Flags and Origins, many of the games released in the franchise usually only changed the setting, but not so much for the gameplay. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey might feel familiar to people who played previous titles, especially Origins, but the game has a world design which sets it apart. While playing Odyssey, I noticed some elements that could be fun to use in roleplaying games. In this blog post, and in a following one, I suggest some elements that you can put into your campaign, especially if you have a decent amount of coastline and a smattering of islands. Here are three out of five inspirations from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Put Treasure Underwater A lot of adventuring I’ve experienced in roleplaying games usually happens firmly on land. That’s fine, but you can also enha...